Desert Rose
by Asano
Summary: The Doctor and Rose become separated and wrapped up in a political powder keg that's about to ignite into fullblown revolution. Will they become lost in the crossfire or can they find each other again before that happens? TenRose, SPOILERS. Pron warning
1. Chapter 1

**Note**: This story contains spoilers for ALL of season one and part of season two. You've been warned.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine, all the BBC's.

* * *

The first thing he was conscious of was the intense heat. The second thing was the brightness. The third thing was a jumble of things really: he was lying on his stomach, there was an intense pain in his head, something on his forehead was stinging and when he inched his finger over to touch it, it felt warm, wet, and rough like blood caked with –

-sand. Sand!

The Doctor jerked his head up and scrambled to his feet. Looking around him, he felt desperation claw its way over the rest of his jumbled thoughts. Rose…there was no Rose, where was Rose?

Where was he?

The desert, that's right. The Sunisian Desert. And by the look of it, he was smack-dab in the middle of the Dune Sea with no point of reference. He went to pat his jacket for his sonic screwdriver, which could function as a compass, only to find he wasn't wearing his jacket. No jacket, no tie, no…hang on, no shoes?

He wiggled his toes in the sand. Nope, no shoes. Just a shirt and trousers. In the middle of the damn desert. No compass, no water, no TARDIS, no…

No Rose. Where the hell was Rose?

Alright, he had to get his bearings, had to think, had to remember. They'd arrived here yesterday, visiting the Great Intergalactic Bazaar in Sunis City, the trade capitol of this planet. This was the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire, before the Reclamation of the Earth, so that would make this roughly 50,000 AD according to Earth reckoning.

They'd just discovered trillium here, the humans had. On this forsaken little desert rock, the greatest source of fuel and therefore power lay buried beneath ancient mountains and endless seas of sand just waiting to be claimed and transformed into the base of a vast and sprawling empire.

Traders and entrepreneurs from all over the galaxy came to Sunisa to barter wares and expand the cultural (and monetary) exchange. He'd brought Rose here to show her the beginnings of mankind's greatness, and also because it was fantastic shopping and she was a London girl, after all.

And the culture of this little planet was astounding. Sunis City was a sprawling mass of red, orange, peach, and yellow sandstone buildings that were each sculpted as a work of art. Huge, elaborately decorated awnings of cloth stretched from building to building, providing the streets below with shade from the vicious sun. Green plants sprouted anywhere the underground water system leaked, stubbornly living in defiance of the desert atmosphere.

The use of terraforming hadn't been possible; it ruined the viability of the trillium. So humanity had shrugged its shoulders and built around the difficulties, showing the universe their resilience, determination, and artistry. Rose had asked him why he was so fixated on humans and the Earth, and he had thought to show her this, show her just how great and wondrous her people could be at times.

At least, that had been the plan.

And yet now, he was standing, Rose-less, in the middle of the Sunisian Desert. This hadn't been part of the plan.

The wind began to pick up, blowing streams of russet sand past his naked feet. It was beginning to get dark as well, how long had he been lying out here? More importantly, who had hit him on the head, and what had they done with Rose?

The wind began to blow more forcefully, and he scowled. Sand in his eyes was not what he needed right now. He'd be fine without water for a while. It wouldn't be pleasant, but he'd hold out longer against dehydration than a human would.

It was getting dark quickly. He frowned again. It was a little too dark. Looking up at the sky, he noted the position of the sun, and then it hit him. It wasn't nightfall.

Very slowly, and dreading what he was going to see, the Doctor lowered his gaze to the horizon, where he could just make out the massive, rapidly encroaching dust clouds. "Oh, shit," he croaked. It was a sandstorm, a giant and vicious one by the look of it.

This had definitely not been part of the plan.

…………………………………………………….

Rose Tyler smiled in her sleep, a secret, sensuous smile that spread across her face. Stretching languidly in the soft bed sheets, she moaned softly as long-fingered hands caressed her body. Their touch was warm and sparkling and filled her with an intense longing. She thought of that plasma storm, imagined herself as that ball of energy, all purple tendrils of heat and passion surging across the universe…

…his universe, the universe he'd shown her.

The hands crept lower and Rose bit her lip as she felt a soft brush against the inside of her thigh.

"She'll do," a rough voice said.

Rose frowned. This wasn't part of the dream.

"Yes," said a second, raspy voice. "But is she a virgin?"

"I don't know," said the first voice in exasperation. "How the hell are you supposed to tell on humans? Is there some sort of button I should check?"

Rose's eyes snapped open and she found herself face to face with a tall, skinny, lime-green being who had one stick-like hand on her breast and the other –

"Oi!" she shouted, scrambling away from him. "Watch it!"

The alien gave a resigned sigh and threw his hands up in the air. "I give up. See? She's already out of her drug trance, I told you to up the dosage, but nooooo, you never listen to me, do you?"

"What the hell are you doing?" Rose shrieked. "Where's the Doctor? Where am I? What's going on?"

"Doctor?" Lime Green frowned. He was obviously the owner of the first voice she'd heard. "Are you hurt?" He turned around to his companion, the owner of the second voice, a short, fat, pinkish man with neon yellow hair. "I told you not to damage her," Lime Green growled.

The Fat Man sputtered. "I haven't! I didn't even touch her!"

Rose squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to either regain her wits or realize she was hallucinating. A simple vacation, the Doctor had said. Some nice shopping, a beautiful city, a nice meal…right.

"There's blood on your shirt," Lime Green was saying to Fat Man.

"That's not hers," Fat Man said. "I had to hit that man. The man she was with, the tall thin one."

Oh, God, no. No, no, no, no…

"I told you not to kill anyone anymore!" Lime hissed angrily. "It'll start to leave a trail, and the Duke won't do business with anyone who isn't discreet! A trail of dead bodies is hardly discreet!"

No.

A fist of ice seemed to grip Rose's heart and she found herself struggling for breath. It wasn't possible. He couldn't be…

"He's not dead!" protested the Fat Man. "At least, not yet."

"What does that mean?" Lime snorted, unknowingly voicing Rose's thoughts.

Fat Man spread his hands and shrugged. "I hit him over the head, but it only knocked him out. He's tougher than that little frame looks. I was gonna finish him off, but I could hear the city patrol coming, so I stashed him on the nearest post transport."

Lime nodded slowly. "I see. The post delivery robots are programmed with a no-tolerance policy towards civilians on postal service property, so they find his body –"

"-liberally splashed with Andarian Fire Whiskey –"

"-and they assume he's a homeless drunk, and chuck him out into the middle of the desert, according to company policy," Lime finished, beginning to smile. "Well done!"

Fat Man grinned. "It's sandstorm season, he won't last long out there."

Rose inched herself farther into the corner of the small, dank room they had her in. She forced herself to breath as her two captors congratulated themselves on a job well done. The Doctor was alive. In danger, yes, but then that was his specialty, after all.

Come to mention it, it was hers, too.

She opened her eyes again and looked at the two laughing aliens. Great. She was locked in a dank basement with Laurel and Hardy in Technicolor and…yep. She was chained to the wall.

One of these days, the Doctor was going to have to get her a sonic screwdriver of her own.

Okay, think. These men…aliens…things…whatever…had gone to the trouble of capturing her, keeping her unharmed, but hadn't done the same with the Doctor, implying that it was her they wanted. Okay. But why?

She was chained to a wall. Obviously a prisoner. But she didn't know anything, didn't have any other valuable information other than about the Doctor. But if it was the Doctor they wanted, they wouldn't have knocked him over the head and thrown him into the desert. So it wasn't information they wanted. What else had they been saying? Before, when she'd woken up?

As the truth occurred to her, Rose felt her jaw drop. Virginity. They'd been debating her virginity. They wanted her body, that's what the groping was. They'd been inspecting her. And something about doing business.

Oh, hell. Bloody damn hell. Fan-bloody-tastic.

No way was this going to happen. Sorry, no. Nope, nada, negative, absolutely not. She'd avoided becoming a Gelth zombie, survived being hunted by a Slitheen, ridden out a massive explosion in a tin box, been possessed by a talking trampoline, faced down and destroyed a Dalek fleet, and had the entirety of the Space-Time Vortex running through her head (even if she couldn't remember most of that). There was no way in hell Rose Tyler was going to be sold as a sex slave in auction after all she'd been through.

Right. First thing was first. She needed to get unchained.

And she needed to get into some other kind of clothing other than the thin, diaphanous piece of silk that was knotted around her hips. She might as well be naked for all intents and purposes.

But that could wait. Better naked and free than naked and, well, not-free.

First thing's first. Rose bent her head, and let out her best heart-piercingly pitiful moan of pain. Lime broke off his conversation with Fat Man and looked at her in irritation. "I thought you weren't hurt?"

Damn it. She should've known slave traders wouldn't be swayed that easily. But then, really, exactly how would she have known that? Not like she was often sold into slavery in an alien meat market.

Lime looked away again, back at Fat Man as the two discussed what sounded like a rendezvous time with this Duke, whoever he was. Right, she couldn't be damaged, was that it?

Oh, she was probably going to regret this. But the Doctor had a store of nanogenes on board the TARDIS, ever since their adventures in the London blitz, so as soon as she got home she'd be right as rain. A small part of her mind raised a mental eyebrow at calling the TARDIS home, but it really was the truth.

Right, then. Rose shifted her bound hands on the floor beyond Fat Man's line of sight. Holding the rest of her body very still, giving the impression she was still sort of out of it from whatever drugs they'd hit her with, she began slowly moving her wrists in small circles. She pushed the tender skin of the inside of her wrist against the roughest bits of metal, forcing herself not to wince as it grated the skin.

Finally after a minute or so, she broke the skin, and blood started to trickle down her arm. Perfect.

"We should go," said Fat Man.

Rose pretended to be in a stupor as they unhooked her chain from the wall and Lime slid his bony hands beneath her armpits, hauling her to her feet. Fat Man unlocked the little cell door and Rose conspicuously moved her arms so that a bit of blood dripped onto Lime's white boots.

Lime snarled a curse in some language the TARDIS refused to translate. Stupid, stupid, she thought. She should've known the Doctor was fine since the telepathic translator was still working.

The blood was having the desired effect. Lime growled at Fat Man, "You weren't supposed to be so rough with her when you bound her, idiot! The Duke wants his women unmarked! It's going to be hard enough sneaking a human girl past the police blockades but a bleeding one? Hell!"

Lime yanked off her bindings and turned her wrists over, glaring at the scrape marks. Rose mentally willed her muscles not to tense in anticipation. She had to time this just right. She had to remember all those things Jack had taught her. All those things she thought she'd really never need to use.

She could be seriously naïve sometimes, she thought bitterly.

Bending her head forward, Rose hid her eyes in the shadow of her hair as she looked around. Lime had pulled her into a small, adobe-looking hallway, with open doorways on either side. To her left, she could see a patch of daylight on the floor. That way must be the way out.

The air was cool and moist down here. There were pipes that ran along side the walls, big and small. The Doctor had mentioned something about an underground water system making the city above fit for human habitation. That's what the pipes must be for.

Lime was working quickly, wrapping gauze ripped from the hem of his long sleeve around her wounded wrists. Behind him, Fat Man had just turned his head to look back into the cell, while Lime's attention was focused on her limp hands.

It was now or never.

In a flash, Rose brought her hands together and swung them upwards viciously, catching the underside of Lime's chin and clacking his jaw together, momentarily stunning him. Just like Jack had taught her.

In the same motion, she flung her weight forward and shoved Lime into Fat Man, who had just turned around, so his balance was off enough for the added weight to knock him over. They hit the floor with a thud, and Rose scrambled off them, darted through the door, and slammed it shut. Thankfully, the lock was old-fashioned and simple enough for Rose to click shut.

Looking around anxiously, she reached to the opposite wall and tugged desperately at one of the thinner pipes, hoping nothing poisonous was inside. It was loose, but it would come free, so she threw her shoulder against it and finally pushed a segment free; enough to reinforce the lock on the cell door. Water spurted everywhere, but she ignored it.

Securing the cell door, she took off at a dead run, darting down the hallway and up the staircase into the sunlight. She didn't dare look behind her to see if anyone was in pursuit.

Gasping for breath, she looked around. She seemed to be in some sort of alleyway, in some residential area. That much was clear from the laundry drying in the air, on clotheslines stretched between buildings. Rose figured she was in one of the poorer sections of the city, then. Like New York or Chicago in the 1930s.

She jumped up just far enough to snatch a length of coarse brown cloth and wrapped it around her naked body. She could fix it more firmly in place or get something else to wear later, for now she just had to keep running far enough and not in a straight line.

It escaped her notice that she was leaving wet footprints in the coarse dust that covered the brick city streets.

………………………………………………………

"This," the Doctor said, struggling to sit upright, "is getting a bit old."

A firm hand pushed him back down onto his back. "Rest," a muffled voice said, "you were injured."

Well, at least they seemed friendly this time round.

"I'm fine," he replied, putting his own hand on top of the hand on his chest and pushing it away. He sat up, blinking in the darkness.

There was a hiss and a small pinpoint of light as his mysterious companion lit a match. The match was held to something and a moment later the room was flooded with a soft light from a sort of oil lamp. Looking around him, he appeared to be in some sort of underground cave, converted into living quarters. There was a soft palette of bedding on which he was laying (naked, he noted curiously), a table in the corner which held an assortment of objects, the lamp that was glowing, some rugs and items of clothing, and stacks of books.

Also, a very large gun. Plasma gun, by the look of it. Interesting.

He glanced up at the other person in the room; a black-robed figure who was facing away from him. "Who are you?" he asked. "And where am I? Wasn't I just…" he trailed off, frowning. "Hold on, there was a sandstorm."

"Yes," the figure said, pushing back the hood of the black robe and unwinding some sort of cloth that was wrapped around the bottom of her face (she sounded female, anyway).

"Yes, what?"

The cloth came fully unbound, revealing a sharp-featured face with short dark hair and round, warm brown eyes. Human, he judged, but he wasn't certain she was full-blooded. She looked vaguely familiar in that sort of looks-like-ten-people-you-know kind of way. Pretty enough, but sort of nondescript.

She crossed over to him and knelt down, examining a bandage she'd apparently put on his forehead wound. "Hrm," she murmured. "You heal quickly. You also have two hearts. Why are you on Sunisa?"

He held her gaze firmly. "I believe I asked you a question first. I'll answer yours if you answer mine," he said, giving her a cheeky wink, which apparently had no affect whatsoever on her.

"My name is Neera Vasuda. I'm a Time Agent. And now is not the time to play games with me, Time Lord. Tell me your name."

What?

"Why are you here? Why Sunisa?" she asked again, her tone still firm.

He met her gaze again, and anyone of lesser mettle would've stopped breathing, but she appeared unfazed. "What makes you think I'm a Time Lord? Time Lords don't exist."

"That's bullocks and we both know it. I've crossed paths with a Time Lord before. Only once, but the experience tends to stick with you until you either die or have your memory erased."

"Who?"

"Tell me who you are first."

His temper snapped and he grabbed her wrist firmly, not enough to hurt her but enough to let her know that he was done joking around. "Answer me," he hissed. If there was even the slightest chance that anyone else had survived…that the blast hadn't killed everyone on Gallifrey, if there was even the faintest possibility that someone had survived, like the Daleks had…

He'd finally rattled her a bit. "A…a man," she stammered. "I don't know his name, he didn't tell me. I don't think he had one. He," she swallowed, tried to pull her arm free, but he held on firmly, not breaking his gaze.

She looked away from him. "I never actually spoke to him. He was injured, very badly. I just sort of stumbled across him, and there was no one else around so I took care of his wounds. He had a fever, a high one, and he was hallucinating. He," she swallowed again, and rasped, "he said things in his sleep…things only a Time Lord could know of. Things I shouldn't know of. Things I never wanted to know."

"You just stumbled upon him." His eyes narrowed. "Where?"

"What does it matter?"

"Where?" he spat.

"Adonius. The moon colony there. Earth year 432 BC. The colony had long since been abandoned by its creators and the place was just ice. Ice, dust and ruins. Whatever ship he traveled in, it crash landed there, and the temporal wave threw my ship's drive out of whack. I had to do an emergency landing, and when I stepped out to do repairs, I just saw him wandering around aimlessly, and then he collapsed, and, well, he was injured. What was I supposed to do? Leave him?"

It couldn't be.

"That was me."

She stared at him. "Impossible. I remember what that man looked like. It wasn't you."

"Looks can be deceiving."

The proverbial light bulb clicked on in her head. "Regeneration," she breathed in an awed whisper. "That was always a legend, I don't think anyone at the Agency really believed it. Well, I don't think anyone really believed in Time Lords, either. My partner did, though."

"Your partner?"

"Man named Jack Harkness." She sighed. "He's gone AWOL, now. God only knows where or when he is. Could be on the other side of the universe for all I know."

Well. Wasn't this just turning into a hell of a day? The Doctor shook his head, trying to clear it, and was aware that he was still gripping Neera's wrist. He hastily dropped and stood, wrapping one of the blankets about his waist. "Jack Harkness?" he repeated.

Neera frowned. "Yes. Why? You know him?" She leaned forward eagerly. "Have you seen him? Is he alright? What is he doing?"

The Doctor held up his hands. "Whoa, hang on. Yes, I know him, I haven't seen him recently, I don't know if he's alright, and I have a suspicion of what he's doing. And I'd love to sit here and chat with you about him, I really would. I'd also love to be able to properly thank you for taking care of me on Adonius, but right now I have some more pressing concerns, which you might be able to help me with."

"Yes?"

"I'm traveling with someone right now. We got separated, somehow, back in Sunis City. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but I don't think it can be good. I'm pretty sure she's probably in danger, and I'd like to find her as quickly as possible."

He stood, wrapping one of the blankets around his waist. Neera stood as well and handed him a pile of clothing. "Here," she said. "Your own clothes were damaged by the sandstorm, and these are designed for desert travel. Also," she fished something out of her own robe's pockets.

"My sonic screwdriver!" he cried happily.

"Is that what that is?" Neera peered at it curiously. A Time Agent and tech. A match born in heaven.

"Hold it," a thought occurred to him. "I get how you found me the first time, and for right now I'm just going to ignore the enormous unexplained coincidence that probably isn't a coincidence that it's you that found me again. How did you find me this time? And why are you here?"

"You're right, it doesn't feel like a coincidence, does it? I never trusted them to begin with, but this is just…strange. Like I said, I'm a Time Agent," Neera paused to roll her eyes as the Doctor motioned for her to turn her back to him so he could dress. "I'm here for a mission."

"Mission?"

"I can't share the details of Agency missions with civilians."

He scoffed. "Civilian? I'm a bloody Time Lord!"

She peered back over her shoulder. "You're a Time Lord and you can't figure out why I'm here? That's a bit disappointing. At any rate, we recover all the poor souls that the postal robots, the police force, and the judicial committee dump out here. Not to mention the Disposal."

The…? Oh. Oh, shit. "Oh, shit," he said. "The Revolution."

Neera turned back around as he finished dressing. "Yes, the Revolution! It's this year. In," she glanced at her chronometer, "about three days' time."

He let out a string of long-unused Gallifreyan swear words. "I'd forgotten."

"You – what?" Neera gaped. "You mean it's not the Revolution you're here for?"

"Er, no," he admitted.

"Then why the hell are you on Sunisa? This year of all years?"

"A bit of shopping?" He pulled nervously at his earlobe; a habit this body seemed to have developed.

Neera was still gawping at him like a fish out of water. "You can't be a Time Lord," she said, finally. "I don't care about your anatomy, I don't care about the temporal warp signature I picked up on my sensors, I just don't' care. You can't be a Time Lord."

"Why not?" he protested.

"Because you're too bloody stupid!"

"Oi! I am not stupid! I just, sort of lost track of time, that's all," he shrugged.

"Lost track of time?"

"Sort of, yeah." He pulled on the extra pair of boots Neera had held out to him. "Now, we can argue later. Right now, I need to find Rose."

Neera shook her head and sighed. "That your companion's name?"

"Yeah, Rose. Rose Tyler. Human girl, full-blood, 21st century. About twenty years old, blond, curvy, got a mouth on her. Old Earth Cockney accent."

Neera frowned and folded her arms, thinking. "We didn't find anyone matching that description in the desert. I'll radio the other bunkers and see if anyone's picked her up in their latest batches of rescues, but I doubt it. Someone who went through all the trouble to dump you out here would've just dumped her with you if that's what they intended to do. She's probably still in the city."

"Why would someone want Rose?"

"I don't – hold on," Neera held up a hand. "What's she look like, again, this Rose? Is she pretty?"

"Yeah, she is. She'd come to about your shoulders, but she's not as skinny as you, she's a bit more curvy. Shoulder-length blonde hair."

"Real blonde?"

He frowned. "I think she dies it, but I don't know. What's that got to do with anything?"

"Does it look natural?" Neera insisted.

"Are you kidding me?" he said irritably. "She could be in danger and you're going to get caddy over hair color?"

"No, listen," she waved her hand dismissively. "If she's blonde, if it looks even slightly convincingly like a real blonde, then I think I might know what happened to her."

"What?" he asked, knowing he wasn't going to like the answer.

Neera moved quickly around the room, gathering items. "The Duke of the Gamma Sector, he recently moved his household here. You know how the Second Empire was close to its end. Just like Rome or Constantinople. Too large an area to govern, too corrupt to govern properly. Lots of little petty aristocrats running around with too much money to spend and too little moral foundation to guide their spending."

"Oh, no," he groaned, seeing where this was heading.

She winced in sympathy, and moved a bit quicker. "There've been reports lately. Women gone missing. Not just human, the few alien species that are crazy enough to come here nowadays have reported females missing as well. Of course, no one paid attention to those reports. Who in this sector cares if an alien woman goes missing?"

"The Duke's assembling himself a little harem," the Doctor growled.

"Yes," Neera nodded. "Full of interesting, beautiful, strange, and unique females that no one misses."

"Why Rose?"

"Blonde hair," Neera said. "That particular genetic trait was lost a while ago among the more purist human faction and is in high demand right now. Most of the chemicals available for hair dye nowadays produces bad results – very obviously not the natural thing."

"Why blonde, though?" he mused.

"With all the xenophobia going around now and the Purge of alien financial holdings and businesses and even families from the centers of the Empire, including Sunisa–"

"-otherwise known as the Disposal," he nodded.

A hard, angry look passed over Neera's face, and she went up a few notches in the Doctor's respect chart. "Right. That. At any rate, there's been, oh, shall we say, a revival of some older Earth customs?" There was an edge of steel underneath her voice.

He nodded again, understanding. "It's a little less Rome and a little more Third Reich."

"You got it."

"I need to get Rose and get her out of here," he said.

"Right," she said, shouldering a pack of equipment. "Sandstorm's still on, so we'll have to travel the tunnels for a bit until we get just outside the city."

He blinked. "You're volunteering to help me?"

"Yes, but it's not for free."

"Ah." He gave her an appraising look. "In return, you want to know about Jack."

Neera bit her bottom lip for a moment. "Look, I partnered Jack Harkness for six years. During those six years, I learned a lot about him, and he's one of the closest friends I've ever had. He's strong, dependable, full of fire, never gives up, always gets the job done, and never once has he ever failed me in anything."

"Were you…close?"

She shrugged. "At times, yeah, if you mean 'were we lovers'. We were more than that, though. No one has ever known me better than Jack Harkness, and until he up and disappeared on me a year and a half ago, I didn't think I knew anyone else like I knew Jack. We were just that close."

"I know the feeling," he smiled softly.

She held his gaze for a moment, considering something. "Hell," she said finally. "If this Rose is anything to you what Jack is to me, I'll help you anyway. Nothing asked in return. Is she?"

"She's more," he whispered, throat suddenly tight.

Neera grinned. "Well, we better get a move on, then."

He swallowed heavily, but managed to grin back at her. "Let's."

They moved out of the small room, Neera holding the lantern before her. She explained to him that this was part of a vast underground network of tunnels, supposedly filled in after the trillium mining went deeper into the desert. They'd been carved out again and turned into headquarters for the Resistance movement, and also functioned as shelter for the dispossessed of the Empire until they could be safely secreted off-world.

"One thing, though," Neera said.

"What's that?" he asked, ducking below a low outcropping of rock as they moved into a smaller service tunnel.

"You never did tell me your name."

"Oh," he grinned. "I'm the Doctor."

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Mirius III was not having a good day. His long, lime-green fingers clenched and unclenched compulsively as he limped out of the dark basement into the sunlit streets of Sunis City. His partner in crime, Karkos, was wheezing heavily and rubbing the small of his back. Not only had their catch escaped them, but the little wench had wounded both of them in the process.

Mirius III rubbed his jaw and scowled. Three of his teeth would have to be replaced, and genuine human enamel wasn't coming cheap these days. Oh, he could get the knock-off brands, the alien bits of teeth – even full denture sets – that floated around the black market and convinced most suckers into buying them, believing they were genuine human enamel.

But he wouldn't have any cheap imitations. No, not for Mirius III. He might not look it, he might have had so many plastic surgeries to change his appearance in his covert agent days, but he was all human on the inside. One of these days he'd convince the Empire Intelligence Service to take him back, despite his irreversible appearance. One of these days, he'd convince them he was worth something.

For now, he just had to bide his time and make a living as best he could. That little blonde girl could've secured him a small fortune from the Duke. Enough credits that he could leave Karkos on this little dust patch and settle on some paradise planet in the Alpha Sector. He could die his skin back to pink, wear padded gloves to hide his elongated fingers, wear a wing. He could have a normal life.

If he could just find that girl again. Vile thing that she was.

Karkos was jumping up and down excitedly and pointing to something. Mirius rolled his eyes and glared at the fat little man with his fashionable pink skin and neon yellow hair. "What?" he snapped.

Karkos grinned, pointing to the surface of the alley street. "Look, Mirius! We're saved! We can find her, the little walking credit bank – look!"

Mirius's followed where Karkos was pointing, and a small grin spread across his face. When the little wench had pulled that pipe free, she must've gotten wet. The moister dripping off her had slid down her body and mixed with the dust on the street to create little muddy footprints, which the sun had so graciously dried and baked into place on the rough brick city street.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

"Well," he bared his teeth in anticipation. The girl wasn't a virgin anyway, not with the way she responded to his hands when she'd been dreaming. Who would tell the Duke if he had a little sample before passing on the wares? "Lead the way, Karkos."

…………………………………………………………..

Rose collapsed against the red sandstone wall, sucking in big breaths, her side cramping painfully, reminding her that for all the running away from danger she did, she could still be in better shape. "Tennis," she breathed to herself, "I should take up tennis. That lot's always in good shape. Oh, God," she moaned, sliding further down until she was sitting on her wet rump in the dust.

She was fairly certain she'd managed to put sufficient distance between herself and the Uglies. Right, okay, she could take a brief breather and then she had to find the Doctor.

How the hell was she supposed to find the Doctor?

For a moment, she felt a wave of despair and panic wash over her, but she squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in a couple steadying breaths. She was Rose Tyler, Defeater of the Daleks, damn it…

'Course, mass genocide probably wouldn't buy her bragging rights in any sort of intergalactic court, Daleks or otherwise.

At first, she'd been pissed to high hell that the Doctor wouldn't tell her what happened on Satellite Five. Rose knew he was keeping something from her out of some worn-out concept of chivalry and over-protectiveness. Must shelter the poor, delicate, little flower, mustn't we?

It wasn't until she'd begun having nightmares that he told her. One more night waking her mum like she had, and Jackie Tyler would've chained Rose in her room and forbidden any further time travel. So the Doctor had taken her up to the roof, sat her down under the starlight, and told her everything that happened on Gamestation.

Everything she'd done, and everything he'd had to do to save her.

She'd been guilty about that for a while; having caused his death and regeneration. But he smiled, winked in that cheeky new manner, and told her it was worth it. Both for her life and for a final end to the Time War.

It was then, when he'd said just those words, that Rose realized exactly why he hadn't wanted to tell her what she'd done. She'd single-handedly done what an army of Time Lords couldn't accomplish, with power she was never meant to have. Power no one was meant to have, not even the Doctor.

For a fleeting moment in time, Rose Tyler had been God.

That thought still made her knees weak and her stomach heave. All that power; she could have done anything! And in the process, she could have ripped apart the universe, destroying all of creation.

She'd never be able to explain it, but she knew how close to the edge she'd been, somehow. Even if she couldn't consciously remember it, she could feel it deep within her…a little kernel of knowledge that if the Doctor hadn't pulled her back, everything would have been lost.

But that was what they did for each other, wasn't it? Her and the Doctor? They got in trouble and they saved each other.

Right. Her turn.

"Post office," she whispered to herself, the gears in her head finally beginning to turn. She had to find whatever passed for a post office around here. Tweedle Ugly and Tweedle Uglier had said that the postal transports dumped people in the desert that they thought were homeless drunks, and that's how they'd disposed of the Doctor.

What the hell kind of planet was this?

At any rate, if she could just go in, find out which transport car thingie reported finding someone on board, then she might be able to explain the situation and get someone to take her out and find the Doctor.

Rose smiled to herself. Not too shabby a plan.

………………………………………………………..

"Okay, then, I'm going to ask this one more time. And this time, I think it would be in your best interest to respond, don't you?" Neera inched the sleek muzzle of her compact laser rifle Mark V just a bit higher. It was now resting directly between the eyes of a very pale, very sweaty, and very frightened little man.

The Doctor leaned casually against the yellow brick façade of the building behind him. They were currently situated under a wide, red silk awning that stretched between two yellow buildings that were evidently warehouses of some kind.

"Madame, please," the little man squealed. "This is a place of business, not some ruffian hideout –"

"Please," Neera snarled. "I know what sort of business is run here, flesh-peddler." Without taking her eyes from the man, she pointed upwards with her free hand at the awning. "Red. Color of the week."

That piqued his curiosity. "Color of the week?" the Doctor asked.

"Yep," Neera said, still not taking her eyes off the man they were questioning. Well, the man she was questioning; he was just sort of standing there and letting her go on about it her way. She knew the locals better than he did. "You know how this city gets in the hottest season. Those silk hangings are everywhere, they shade the streets, they beautify the city. They also come in many colors."

"I'd noticed that. I'd just never realized the colors meant something other than simple decoration."

She frowned. "I thought you said you'd been here before."

"I have," the Doctor shrugged. "Just only once or twice and a very long time ago. So the red signifies, what? The pleasure districts?"

A slow, feral smile spread across Neera's face. "Pleasure districts are outlawed here, since the income they earn is not legally taxable in the Empire, and the Duke does like his tax income. But folks find a way around that, don't they, Peasely?"

The little man, Peasely, whimpered.

"They move," Neera went on, "week to week; they just pack up and leave and set up somewhere else. The black market here isn't a black market at all. It's rather multi-colored. Color coded vices for every occasion. This week, red happens to be the color for sex."

A memory of something Rose said tugged the corner of his mouth upwards. "Not mauve?"

"You don't want to know what mauve is."

"Oh," the Doctor blinked. "Quite right."

"Now, Peasely," Neera flipped the safety off on her weapon. For a moment, the Doctor debated whether or not to intervene, but a stronger part of him wanted to see how this played out; wanted to get a good judge of Neera Vasuda's character.

"Peasely," she repeated, "you and I need to have a little heart to heart. I know things about you, Peasely, about the things you do at night. The things you think no one else knows about. Things your little pure-blood city council friends would be horrified to find out."

"What," he swallowed, "what do you want?"

"Information. Where are Mirius and Karkos, and what are they up to? Did they make any new…acquisitions lately?" Neera winced as the Doctor inhaled sharply at her word choice.

"I haven't seen them."

"But you hear everything, Peasely, don't play with me."

Peasely swallowed again, seemingly having an inner debate with himself. "They're going for the big cash. Credit stacks I can't hand out, so they didn't even try me. I think they're going straight up on this one."

"The Duke, you mean," the Doctor interjected.

Neera nodded. "We figured that much. I want to know why they think they can make so much money off of her."

Peasely licked his lips and the Doctor found his stomach turning. "Have you seen her? She's perfect. Pure blood to the last drop and blonde to boot."

"The Duke's not in residence yet," Neera said, throwing a warning glance at the Doctor, who was forcing himself to stay still; to not shove this man up against the brick and strangle the seedy, leering life out of him. "Where are they holding her?"

Peasely spread his hands. "How should I know?"

Neera studied him for a long moment. Then, lightening fast, before the Doctor had time to even react, and still keeping the barrel of her weapon against his head, she kicked out viciously with her heel. Her blow landed in the middle of Peasely's knee, which snapped back with a sickening crack of bone and ligament.

The little man collapsed, but Neera dragged him back to his feet and slammed him against the brick wall. "Like I said," she continued. "In your best interest to answer me, really."

The Doctor held his breath, readying himself to intervene if Neera should go to far. For a moment, he wondered if he was a bit crazy for trusting her on instinct, but it wasn't like he'd never seen Jack violent. Not like he'd never been violent himself at times, especially when Rose was concerned.

And that thought scared him just a bit.

"Third Section," Peasely whimpered, crying. "There's a collection of hotels there, lower-end. Out of season now, so Mirius and Karkos hide out in the basements there sometimes."

"Specific address?" Neera pressed.

Peasely shook his head, sobbing now. "No, please, I don't know…honestly, I don't. If I did, I'd tell you…just please don't…oh, please…"

"Relax, you twit," she snapped. Thumbing down a secondary lever on her blaster, she pressed the trigger. Peasely collapsed into a limp heap onto the dust-covered brick street.

"No!" the Doctor yelled.

She gave him a cold look. "He's stunned, not dead. I won't say I'm not a killer, because I am. I have been before, and I'll be so again. But I do not kill with out sufficient reason, nor do I kill if there's any other way around it."

Bending over the unconscious Peasely, Neera pulled out a small round instrument with a few buttons. Pressing them down in a certain sequence, she then held the little sphere over the little man's injured knee. A swarm of tiny golden nanogenes swarmed over the flesh, then were recalled back into the sphere with the press of another button.

The Doctor nodded his approval, but his jaw was still clenched slightly. "I agreed to let you do this your way, since you have a knowledge of the underground here. And I won't deny, you get results. But I'm not sure I trust you, Neera Vasuda. You're a bit unstable."

"It's your friend's life on the line, not mine," Neera shrugged. "I agreed to help you in the first place as a courtesy. You're," she paused, aware they were no longer in the tunnels, "well, you're what you are. I'm helping you for that reason, Doctor. You don't have to trust me, but you do have to stay out of my way if you want me to find Rose for you. You're also the last one to lecture me on mental stability."

His eyes narrowed. Being challenged was something he'd never taken well, in any of his previous lives, and certainly not now. But she'd refrained from speaking 'Time Lord' out here in public where they could be overheard, she was indicating that she held some sort of respect for what he was, she'd quite possibly saved his life before (though he didn't remember much of that time), and all in all…she was agreeing to take time out of her mission and help him recover Rose.

Or was she? Was there perhaps some double purpose she was serving? Or was he merely getting paranoid in his old age?

He let his gaze soften just a tad, his jaw unclenched but not exactly smiling, either. "As long as we know where we stand."

…………………………………………………………….

Rose Tyler was not a fan of queues. She'd always made her mum go to the bank for her, and she usually made Mickey stand in line for film tickets while she wandered around the shops. Waiting was not a virtue that came naturally to her.

Or at all, really.

Apparently, automating bureaucracy made it no easier to endure. If anything, the waiting in line was worse, and you couldn't even make small talk to pass the time. Everyone was just staring around the postal office with a sort of glazed expression, and the postal worker robots were no fun to talk to. She'd tried to strike up a conversation with one after the first hour of waiting, and had gotten nowhere after the first series of beeping noises it made.

Pfft. Never thought she'd long for the Anne-droid. Least it would've come in useful right about now.

At least she wasn't naked anymore. She'd passed by another set of laundry lines, and had pulled down a length of simple red cloth that was shaped somewhat like a sari. She'd wrapped it around herself as though it was one, and had bound it to her waist with another length of fabric that she suspected was probably a scarf of some sort.

All in all, it didn't look too bad. Could almost pass for haute couture back on her Earth.

Rose let out a sigh and sank lower into her chair in the waiting area. Seriously, this was ridiculous. And she was getting sick of this; sick of being on her own. She wanted the Doctor back, and she wanted him now. After all, he was stuck out in the desert, wasn't he? Every minute could cost him precious time.

She really didn't think she was strong enough to go through another regeneration with him.

Standing up, she made her way to what she thought was likely the ladies' room. Or something approaching that, anyway.

Turned out it was a ladies' room, and as she bent over a small sink, splashing water onto her face, a woman came up and began judiciously applying very bright makeup in the long, gold-tinted mirror.

"Oh, love," said the woman. "You really should look at getting a better beautician, the dye job on your lashes is running. Here," she pressed a piece of tissue into Rose's hand and indicated the running mascara.

"Thanks," Rose murmured, swiping beneath her eyes.

"What are you doing here?" The woman asked. "You must have money to have a lovely dye job like that done on your hair. I've never seen such a convincing blonde. You know, everything you buy in shops just comes out either neon yellow, yellow-green, or that deep saffron color. Well, the saffron's rather pretty, I suppose, but not if you're trying to look authentic, you know?"

First time someone had made a comment on her hair and not made it a peroxide crack. Rose nodded.

"I got lost," she told the woman. She wasn't exactly sure why.

The woman smiled kindly. "Oh, I see. Here," she dug a bit deeper in her bag. "I have something that'll help you relax a bit."

"Oh, I'm fine, really," Rose protested. She wasn't about to go trying any alien drugs.

The woman smiled wider. "It's alright, really. Just a bit of herbal tea."

Rose straightened and fixed her makeshift sari. "No, honest, I'm great, thanks. I just needed a little breather, but I'm great now."

"I think," the woman said slowly. "That you should let me help you."

A cold chill ran down Rose's spine. "Um, I'll just be going now. I'm really not that lost, I think I know where I am now. Thank you for your help and all, but…" she made a helpless sort of gesture to the door and shrugged. "You know, men, they get impatient when you wonder off on 'em."

She forced a grin, hoping the woman would buy the lie that someone was waiting for her outside. Well, he was, she just didn't know where, so it wasn't a total lie. Rose turned to go, giving the woman one last fake smile.

"Wait, you dropped this."

Like an idiot, she turned around. And the next thing she was aware of was hitting the floor in a crumpled heap before she blacked out.

……………………………………………………………..

"Idiot," Tavreena snorted, pocketing her tube of aerosolized tranquilizer perfume.

Out of her bag, she pulled a small, thin metal cylinder and pressed a button on it. "Your Excellency, I think I found something…of interest to you. No, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, I've taken care of the other problem. I promise you, sir, the rest of the fringe will take a lesson from the other two about what happens when they're not…discreet."

…………………………………………………………….

"Well," the Doctor said softly. "This is a problem."

Neera cursed in at least six different languages. Seeing the sight laid out before him, the Doctor felt he could add a few expletives of his own. This was not pleasant. Or helpful.

He lifted up the piece of cloth hanging from the neck of his desert clothes and held it across his face. It functioned as a breathing screen during light sandstorms, and would keep away the smell of the two dead bodies as he bent over them with the sonic screwdriver.

"And these are?" he asked, afraid to know the answer.

"The men we were looking for," Neera said wearily. "Mirius III – that's the lime green fellow – and his not-so-lovely assistant Karkos."

"They're pure human," he said in surprise. "Well, you can sort of tell with Karkos, though his skin's gone a bit pink with sun poisoning. But this Mirius fellow…why would any pure blooded human go through all the trouble of altering his appearance like this, with imperial society the way it is?"

Neera sighed. "He was an undercover Imperial Intelligence agent once. Good one, too. But his surgeries were irreversible at the time, and his appearance – not to mention the enemies he made when he revealed his true loyalty – forced him to lie low in the darkest corners of the criminal world. He probably saw Rose as the meal-ticket of a lifetime. Pure walking gold to him, and enough money to buy a new body."

"And a new life," the Doctor finished. "Only, that's obviously not going to happen now. Any idea who killed them?"

Neera bent down beside him. "I recognize that style of execution. Yeah, I know who did this."

"It's the Duke's men, isn't it?" He looked at her.

She pursed her lips and stood. "The Duke's woman, actually. She's called 'Tavreena'. She's the Duke's right hand, the doer of his dirty work. Real piece of work, too…damn, she's nasty."

"Got experience with her?"

"I've seen the results of her work. This is the tamest I've ever seen"

The Doctor looked at the two bodies, or what was left of them, as he stood and pocketed the sonic screwdriver. He suppressed a shudder. If this was tame, he didn't want to think about worse.

"If you can see it this way, the good news is that in Tavreena's care – as dangerous as the murderous psychopath might be, Rose is safe. With these two, they might have tried to…well, they might have tried something. Or been violent." Neera grimaced. "Tavreena won't risk damaging anything she thinks belongs to her Duke."

"So she's safe for the moment, but we still need to reach them before they get to the palace," the Doctor nodded.

"Right."

He gritted his teeth. This was going from bad to worse. They'd tracked down the location Peasely had given them, and from there they'd tracked both Rose and her captors. Apparently, at some point, Rose had gotten away from them and run off into the city, with Mirius and Karkos on her heels.

But any evidence they'd been following had been lost once they'd hit the busy inter-city. It was just too crowded to effectively find just one person.

Rose was a strong girl, and she'd been in incredible danger before and gotten herself out of it, but this was different. There had been only one other time that Rose had been the target of danger, and it wasn't an experience he liked to remember. She'd been so truly frightened for the first time, he'd felt sure she was going to ask to go home as soon as they'd gotten back to the TARDIS.

But she hadn't. She'd stuck with him, his Rose, and now she was out there, alone, again. Probably scared off her wits, but holding it together because she hated to think she was weak.

Oh, Rose, he thought, just hang on a little bit longer. I'm coming to get you, Rose.

………………………………………………………………

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Rose awoke with a massive headache, groaning as she struggled to sit up. It was bright, she registered as she attempted to open her eyes. Blinking rapidly, her sight adjusted and the sharp pain of the headache faded.

It took a few moments for her brain to begin processing what she saw as she looked around herself. The room was massive, a cross between a Louis XVI parlor and a Notre Dame de Paris chamber. Gold detail ran up every nook and cranny, meeting in the middle in some sort of intricate swirling design while windows made of colored glass fragments refracted patches of light across the iridescent marble floors.

She was lying on a big, soft cushion pallet, behind a curtain of sheer white silk – the same sort of fabric she had been draped in earlier. Rose dreaded seeing what she might be wearing now.

Looking down at herself, she stared for a second, then repressed the wild urge to laugh hysterically. "I'm Princess Bloody Leia!" she snorted to herself.

There was indeed some sort of gold, metallic gold apparatus strapped bikini-style to her breasts and tied in back with thin chains. Very thin chains, Rose frowned as she slid a hand over her back and felt them.

Around her hips was draped a belt of the same metal, fashioned in large, linking circles. The belt was apparently holding in place four lengths of shimmering, blue-green fabric – one covering her front bits, one covering her rear (most of it, she hoped) and one to each side of hips.

This, she thought ruefully, was by far the strangest she'd ever had to dress, and that was including the feather suit on Feripitorial. She'd actually been rather fond of the feathers. Nice and warm, they were.

God, she sounded like the Doctor.

Right, okay, she was dressed like a space whore out of a bad '80s sci-fi movie like those films Mickey loved. As long as she wasn't naked again, she could handle it. All her bits seemed to be covered adequately, provided she didn't plan any gymnastics soon.

Well, there was no real guarantee of that, was there?

"Oh, you're awake!"

Rose nearly jumped straight out of her skin at the sound of a voice. Hopping to her feet, she pulled aside the silk curtain and blinked when she saw who – or what – had spoken.

"He…Hello?" Rose managed.

The woman smiled at her kindly. At least, Rose assumed she was female. She had the same basic shape as a human woman, all the bumps and curves and whatnot. Her facial features were similar except for the wispy antennae that began at her forehead and followed the curve of her skull back. Her skin, though, was the most marvelous shade of reddish-gold, growing lighter on her exposed belly and the undersides of her arms. And…cor, she had wings! Intricately detailed, shimmering, and clear, they stretched out like dragonfly wings, two on each side.

"My name is Amara," she said. Her voice reminded Rose oddly of honey; smooth and as golden as she looked. "This is my chamber," she waved a hand around. "The Duke has allowed me more space than most because of my…special needs." Her wings twitched in an almost self-conscious gesture.

"I'm not sure what to say," Rose replied honestly. "Where am I?"

Amara blinked. "You are in the palace. You have come to serve the Duke, yes?"

"No!" Rose said. "I was…I think I must've been kidnapped. One moment I was in the post office, and the next I was here."

"Oh," Amara said, surprised. "But you must be mistaken! There is no one here who is not here to serve the Duke!"

Before Rose could reply, an old woman – a human woman, this time – draped in black robes strode into the chamber, holding a tray of elixirs before her. "Awake, then?" she said curtly. "Here, drink this."

The old woman shoved a glass full of blue liquid under Rose's nose. Amara accepted one similar and downed it in one gulp. Rose stared at hers in horror. How could she know what was in the glass or what it would do to her? What should she do? What could she possibly do? The old woman was staring at her expectantly.

Almost too fast for Rose to catch, one of Amara's wings flicked out and knocked over the old woman's tray, sending glass vials crashing and shattering to the floor. As the woman cursed and bent over to pick up the tray, another wing flicked out just enough to bump Rose's hand, and send the contents of her glass into the nearest flower arrangement.

Rose stared at Amara in astonishment. She gave Rose one quick wink in return before bowing her head demurely as the old woman straightened up. "I am sorry, Nurse Halfor, ma'am, I can't seem to control them."

Nurse Halfor's old, craggy face stared at Amara in disgust. "Foul things," she muttered, "should've torn them from you when you got here." The tone of her voice gave Rose a bit of a shiver; she was sure Halfor was more than capable of tearing out the wings with her bare hands, despite her age.

"Yes, ma'am," Amara murmured, head still lowered respectfully.

Nurse Halfor scowled again as she collected Rose's empty glass. Rose imitated Amara's bow, afraid of what the Nurse might rip out of she was angered. Besides, she was beginning to have a suspicion that the elixir was some sort of sedative, so she'd better act the part.

As the nurse left, Amara threw Rose a warning glance and then led her over to a doorway set in the far corner of the chamber. "The Duke will not require you until nightfall. Would you walk with me for a bit in the garden?"

Wordlessly, Rose nodded, a small knot of fear and panic having settled firmly in her stomach at the mention of the Duke "requiring" her.

Amara linked arms with Rose as they stepped into the bright sunlight outside. Amara sighed and said, "Let's not mar the beauty of the morning with words, yes?" She smiled brightly, but Rose saw that it the smile was tight, as if forced, and didn't quite reach Amara's eyes.

It was probably a warning to not talk, but it wasn't as if Rose cared to talk anyway. She was stuck alone in some strange harem that belonged to some strange man who was going to "require" her later in the evening. She still had no idea where the Doctor was, if he were hurt or even alive. If she managed to find him, would he be wearing a different face again? Would he -?

Rose closed her eyes briefly as she walked, again fighting down a wave of panic. All she had to do right now was find a way out. Once she was free of the palace, then she could concentrate on finding the Doctor or the TARDIS. Maybe if she could find the TARDIS, she'd figure out some way to contact or locate the Doctor.

Provided she didn't go and stick her head into the Time Vortex again, Rose didn't think he'd mind it if she did some jiggery-pokery of her own on the ship.

Of all the times to lose her phone…

…………………………………………………………………………..

"What's that?" Neera asked, peering over the Doctor's shoulder.

"Rose's mobile phone," he said, fiddling with the back of it. "Useful bit of technology."

"If she doesn't have it on her," Neera pointed out, "how exactly is it useful?"

He smiled slightly. "Not so useful as a phone for the moment, but," he replaced the battery pack and the additional bits he'd salvaged from whatever tech Mirius and Karkos had possessed, "a little bit of jiggery-pokery –"

"Is that a technical term?" she drawled. "At the Agency, we called it 'MacGuyvering'. Leftover verb from the twentieth century. Also commonly known as 'not going to work for shit'."

He paused long enough to shoot her a glare. "With a little bit of jiggery-pokery, we've got ourselves one handy-dandy Rose Locator."

Neera opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Um, how, exactly?"

"Our two dearly departed friends back there were carrying genome identification technology. They used it out in the market earlier to identify Rose as a pure-blooded human."

"Right," she nodded. "It's tech that's been skimmed from Imperial Immigration Agents. They use it to prevent illegal border crossings."

The Doctor grinned. "See, all I've done is amplified its detection range, and used the mobile's frequency transmitter to broadcast the signal, which'll bounce off any decent transmitter array back to," he waggled the phone, "this."

"Clever."

"Yes, I am. Now, Rose is probably the purest-blooded human on this planet, coming as she does from the early twenty-first century, so her signal should be the strongest." He switched the phone on, then promptly proceeded to swear.

Neera raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't work, MacGuyver?"

"Of course it works," he spat, "she's just already inside the palace."

"Shit," Neera echoed. "Tavreena works fast. Security around the palace is incredibly tight. Especially now that there are whispers of armed rebellion in the wind. And they're going to have enough trouble getting past the triple security detail tonight, without us going in early and making it worse."

"What's tonight?"

"The bombing of the palace," she frowned. "The spark that sets off the powder keg. C'mon, Time Lord, remember your history."

"I need to get to the TARDIS," he said.

"The what?"

"My ship, the TARDIS. It can get us inside the palace, and quietly, but I need to find it first. It's definitely not where I parked it."

Neera stared. "How do you lose an entire spaceship?"

"Please, I've lost entire planets before," the Doctor replied absently, "but my ship is a different story. It's transdimensional; got a cloaking circuit on it. Looks like a big –"

"-blue box?" she finished. "I remember that, now. I remember seeing it on Adonius when I found you – and I'm still not quite sure I believe that it was you – when I found you injured, you were laying next to a big blue box, like you'd fallen out of it. I didn't pay it any attention, I figured it was just part of the abandoned city."

"Seen it recently?"

"No."

He ran a hand through his hair. "Big help, you are. Where would a large, unidentified object on a city street be taken?"

They looked at each other. "Rubbish heap," they said in unison.

"This way!" Neera said, taking off at a brisk run, the Doctor right behind her.

……………………………………………………………………………………

Rose and Amara walked in silence together for a little while. Rose looked around, but didn't really take in any of the beautiful flora and fauna of the palace garden. Again it reminded her of something from Louis XVI's time; all that beauty and wonder contained in one small space and reserved only for the very elite, removed from the common man.

As someone who had grown up poor, scraping to make ends meet, Rose found herself resenting the beauty rather than enjoying it. She'd never paid much attention to history in school – or anything in school, really, other than the boys – so she couldn't remember much about the French Revolution, but she found herself sympathizing with it greatly.

Amara pressed her hand against the inside of Rose's arm with a gentle pressure, guiding her away from the garden path and behind a small grove of trees. "These were planted by the Duke at my suggestion," she said quietly. "He thinks they're part of my homeworld's indigenous plant life."

"Aren't they?" Rose asked, not particularly interested.

"No," Amara replied, the tone of her voice becoming more serious. Rose looked at her with curiosity. "I had them planted because their pollen produces a certain electromagnetic signature that renders listening devices inert. Bottom line: we can't be overheard here."

"I…what? Who are you?" Rose blinked in confusion.

"I told you my name already. I am Amara, the favored mistress of the Duke of the Gamma Sector, third most powerful man in the Second Empire." She smiled ruefully. "What that translates to is that I'm a prisoner. A bauble dressed up for the Duke's entertainment and paraded around at Imperial parties because I'm such a pretty little alien, aren't I? I live in a cage, Rose, gilded though it may be. And I'm not the only one. The Duke has himself a collection, to which you are the newest addition, I assume."

"I'd just as soon not be," Rose said firmly.

Amara smiled. "I know. I figured that much out. Many of the girls that the Duke…acquires…they get so scared they just end up obeying. They drink their little tonic from Nurse Halfor, which reduces them to simpering, drug-hazed idiots, and they're content to lounge about looking pretty and service the Duke when he requires it."

"I'm not servicing any Duke," Rose spat, "in any way, shape or form."

"Good girl," Amara's smile widened to a grin.

"What do I do, then?"

Amara tilted her head, giving Rose an appraising look. "I had a look at you while you were sleeping off the drugs earlier, before Halfor arrived. You're a pure-blooded human," Amara leaned in, sniffing her, "and there's something not quite…right about you."

"How do you mean?" Rose frowned.

"There's something a bit off…like you don't fit here. Like you're a loose piece of a puzzle that wasn't quite cut properly. You don't belong here, Rose, I can see that. I can feel it. My people, we're…more sensitive than other species."

"You're right, I don't belong here," Rose said. "But where I do belong isn't important. What's important to me now is that I get out of here as quickly as possible. I've got a friend. He could be in danger; I need to find him. He could be hurt."

"He could also be trying to find you," Amara pointed out.

"Yeah, there is that," she sighed.

"I can help you…" Amara began, but trailed off, giving Rose an uncomfortably appraising look.

"But?" Rose prompted.

The other woman sighed, folding her arms, and letting her wings relax. "My race," she began, "is sort of telepathic. Not that powerful, really. If we concentrate hard enough, we can form emotional bonds with someone, and while we can't read specific thoughts, we can always feel what the other person is feeling. We can only sense that from those we've bonded with, and the bonds themselves can be either permanent or temporary."

"Alright," Rose swallowed. "And you're telling me this because?"

Amara leveled a hard look at Rose. "Because I can help you, but I need to know I can trust you. I need to know you're not a spy."

Rose put it together, finally. "And you think if you do this bonding thing with me, you'll be able to sense whether or not I'm lying?"

"I don't think, I know. And yes, that's the idea."

"What if I was a spy? You've already given away a lot."

Amara smiled tightly, and pulled a small spray bottle from a pocket in her gown. "Essence of habordalliam. You'll forget everything within the last two hours."

Rose was silent for a moment. What about the link with the TARDIS? Would it interfere? But that was just language translation, wasn't it? Besides, if she said 'no', she had a feeling Amara would use that essence of whatever-the-hell-it-was, and Rose couldn't afford to lose two hours of her memories.

Oh, hell. Time to take a chance.

"Right," she nodded. "It's a bit Star Trek, but I guess it'll have to do. Get on with it, then."

……………………………………………………………………………………

Two hastily-disposed-of robots later, the Doctor stood in front of the TARDIS and spread his arms triumphantly. "Rescued from the rubbish heap yet again, my beautiful ship!" he cried, beaming.

Neera wiped the dust off her trousers and picked an errant bit of robot gut out of her hair that still seemed to be blinking. Dropping it to the pavement, she crushed it with her boot heel and grinned in satisfaction as it gave a loud crunch. "No thanks to you and your useless bit of sonic crap. Who has a sonic screwdriver?"

"I do."

"I mean, who looks at a screwdriver and even thinks to make it sonic?"

The Doctor glared over his shoulder. "Oi, I am not having this conversation again."

"'Again'?" She echoed, but the Doctor was busy patting himself down, searching for something.

"Don't tell me it has a key," Neera said.

"'Course it has a key," he glared again. "It is a spaceship, after all. Gotta have security."

"Security, yes. Maybe a retinal scan, DNA recognizing technology, even voice activation. A key? Not so much."

"Little hard to go on physical identification technology when your physiology changes," he pointed out. "Don't suppose you found a key with the rest of my junk they tossed out in the desert?"

"Nope," she shook her head. "We found your jacket and shoes, but inside the jacket was only the sonic screwdriver."

"Damn. Come here, then."

She gave him a dubious look. "What?"

He motioned her over. "Come here. I keep a spare key up top above the door, but I'm not tall enough to reach it on my own."

Neera groaned and stepped into his outstretched hands, letting him hoist her up so she could search for the key. "Nope," she said after a minute of searching. "No key."

"What?" he frowned, setting her down. "I'm sure I used to keep a key up there."

"I can lift you up, if you like."

"No, thank you," he said quickly. "Oh!" he smacked his forehead. "Rose's things. Those two dead idiots; they had Rose's things. Rose has a key."

They searched through Rose's things, stored in Neera's pack, but soon gave up. "She must still have it on her," Neera said.

"After the last time she lost it, I suggested she wear it as a necklace," the Doctor sighed. "Hell of a time to start actually listening to me, for a change."

Neera rubbed the bridge of her nose in irritation. "So, you, a however-many-centuries-old Time Lord, possessing one of the universe's most advanced pieces of technology, can't access said technology because you've lost a small bit of stylized metal."

"Well…essentially, yeah."

"I think I might hate you. What about that sonic screwdriver of yours? Can't you pick the lock?"

"Nope," he said.

"But I saw you pick locks back there! You telling me you can't even pick an old-fashioned key-lock on a big wooden box?"

He folded his arms in irritation. "Look, the TARDIS is an extremely old, extremely advanced bit of machinery. She may look like an ordinary blue box, and it may look like an ordinary keyhole, but I assure you, it's anything but."

"So this TARDIS is unusable, then?"

"For now."

Neera opened her mouth, then closed it again. The Doctor watched her carefully as she turned her head to study the horizon of the city. It was near evening, and without the sun beating down so harshly as it did during midday, the weather was almost pleasant. A faint breeze picked up and ruffled Neera's short black hair as her brow furrowed in thought.

He could guess what she was thinking. He was almost positive that Special Agent Neera Vasuda of the Time Agency had a way into the palace. She wouldn't be the professional she was if she didn't plan for every contingency in her mission.

Come to think of it, what exactly was her mission? Just to see that the revolt gets off to the right start? No, the Agency wouldn't bother sending anyone for something that trivial.

Was she meant to stop it, then? Probably not, as there were a million ways she could have done that by now.

Then…what?

He was almost about to ask her when she finally spoke up again. "Alright," she said, facing him. "There's a way into the palace. But we have to time this perfectly. The bomb has to go off as planned; the revolt has to happen tonight."

The Doctor frowned. History was fluid enough that one night wouldn't be much of a setback, why was she so intent…and then it clicked. "It has to go off tonight," he echoed, eyes widening slightly, "because you've already changed history, haven't you?"

"I-"

He took a step closer and looked down at her. "You've already moved the rebellion up…how far? A day? A week? A month?"

Her face set into an impassive mask. "And what if I have?"

He shrugged. "Makes no difference to me, so long as it happens. Same for you. But why, though? There's someone out there you think has enough power to change the course of human events, and you're trying to prevent that from happening by changing it yourself. Who is it that has you and the Agency so scared?"

That unsettled her a bit. She looked around and swallowed. "It doesn't matter. Do you want to find your companion, or not?"

The Doctor studied her face again. She was good, he'd give her that. But something had her scared to death. And something that could scare a highly trained Time Agent that badly was something big. But she wouldn't tell him any more right now, he could sense that. He'd already pushed her too far.

She met his gaze steadily, iron will reigning in any vestiges of emotion. "Well," she said, "do you want to find Rose?"

"More than ever," he replied.

"Then follow my lead, and whatever you do, don't speak."

…………………………………………………………………………………….

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

"The sun is fading," Amara said softly. "Are you ready?"

Rose was doing her best not to hyperventilate. "I…yes, I'm fine."

"You're frightened."

"You need to stay out of my head," Rose snapped.

Amara laid a gentle hand on Rose's shoulder. "I can't exactly help it, Rose. We're bonded now."

"How romantic." Rose knew she was being incredibly rude to the one person who had helped her, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She just felt…off, somehow. Like something wasn't right.

"That's the bond," Amara answered her unspoken question. "Your mind is resisting it because there's something else already bound to it. One connection too many, it seems."

"The TARDIS," Rose said. "My ship. Well, my friend's ship. It translates alien languages for me."

They were standing inside Amara's rooms again, in the wardrobe room. Apparently, Rose was expected to dress extravagantly for a private dinner tonight with the Duke. Amara led her over to a chaise lounge in the corner of the elegant room, and made her sit down.

Rose flinched as her head began to throb again. It had been doing this off and on since Amara had first touched her mind. "I've felt telepathic technology before," Amara murmured, sitting down beside Rose, "but nothing like this. It's trying to force me out of your mind."

"She's a bit overprotective," Rose smiled softly. Somehow, ever since the incident with the Sycorax, she'd come to associate the Doctor's personality with the TARDIS. It just seemed fitting at times.

"Rose, for this plan to succeed, we need to time everything perfectly. We need to remain in constant contact, and the only way to do that without being detected is through telepathy. I need you to relax, and allow the bond to fully form. Lie down,"

"Excuse me?"

Amara stood and motioned to the chaise lounge. "I said, lie down. On your stomach."

Rose frowned, but did as she was told. After a moment, she felt the thin clasps holding her Princess Leia bra in place slide off her back. "Oi," she said, turning her head and half rising. "What do you think you're doing?"

Amara pushed her gently back into the cushion. "Relaxing you."

"Um, look," Rose protested, as Amara's hand began to run up her bare skin, "you're very lovely and all, but I don't really…well, girls aren't really my thing, if you get what I'm saying."

Amara laughed. "Silly humans. Why must every physical touch be considered sexual?" She bent down, her mouth close to Rose's ear, breath tickling against her cheek. "I'm well-trained in all forms of pleasure, and plenty of them are perfectly platonic. Now, relax."

Rose did as she was told, never one to refuse a massage when it was offered. She remembered her sixteenth birthday, when her mum had saved up and bought them a spa weekend holiday package in Spain. The place had turned out to be utter rubbish, but the masseuses had been a young, handsome Spanish men straight off the cover of a romance novel. She and her mum had laid on their respective tables, giggling madly, the laughter more relaxing than the massage itself.

At the memory, Rose felt a sharp longing for home that hit her so hard her breath caught in her throat.

As she struggled to hold back her own tears, she felt – rather than heard – Amara crying softly. The other woman's tears hit the bare skin of Rose's back, and Rose flipped over and sat up, putting a hand on Amara's shoulder.

"What is it?" she asked.

Amara closed her eyes. "I'm sorry. The bond is steady now, and you just caught me off guard, that's all."

"I don't understand."

"The bond is more empathic than telepathic, meaning we can sense each other's emotions, but we have to concentrate to send actual thoughts," she explained. "Your memory…I felt it, and it…"

"It made you think of home," Rose finished for her, feeling the other woman's longing as strongly as if it were her own. She could feel inside Amara's own memories; the haunting pain she felt. "Your people," she said, "your family…they're all bonded, aren't they? You're all so close, so knit together…and when they took you, when you were brought here, it was like being ripped apart; like having your soul torn from you."

Amara was staring at her, amber eyes wide and tear-filled. She nodded, and it took her a moment to speak. "I try not to think of it," she said hoarsely. "It hurts too much. But sometimes, I'm so afraid that I'll never see them again. I'll die out here on this horrid desert planet, all alone."

Rose tilted her head, lost inside Amara's feelings. "If you're buried out here alone, you think your soul will be forever lost, don't you?"

Amara blinked back fresh tears. "To burn the body is blasphemy to the Imperial way of thinking. But if my body is buried here beneath the sand, I'll be trapped here for eternity. If I am burned, then my soul will be free; I can return home."

Rose shook herself free of the tangled emotions. "You'll go home, Amara," she said firmly. "But you'll be alive when you do, I promise."

Amara stroked the side of Rose's cheek affectionately. "You're an extraordinary woman, Rose Tyler, I can sense that within you. You've seen so much, done so much. But not even you can promise me that."

"Just you wait and see," Rose grinned. "Now, let's get ready for tonight. Did we decide on the pink outfit or the green and silver?"

Amara smiled and wiped the tears from her cheeks. They both stood, Rose realizing belatedly that her top had come completely undone and fallen off. Then she felt a subtle shift in her mind, and turned her head to find Amara gazing at her appreciatively.

"Girls may not be your thing, Rose, but they are mine from time to time," Amara said, smiling a bit seductively.

Rose opened her mouth to say something, but before she could protest, Amara had taken a step closer and gently covered Rose's lips with her own. It was a quick kiss, hardly anything but a brush of skin and quick nip of teeth, but it left Rose's skin burning. Her knees felt slightly weak, and where Amara's hand had brushed against her bare torso felt on fire.

She stood there, a bit dazed, as Amara walked away from her, back towards the nearest open wardrobe. "If you're right," Amara said, almost huskily, "if we both make it out of here alive, maybe," she looked back at rose and smiled widely, lifting one delicate eyebrow, "just maybe, I can change your mind about girls?"

Rose blushed a deep scarlet and turned away, picking up the metal bra from the floor.

But she didn't argue.

……………………………………………………………………………………

This, the Doctor thought, was asking a bit much. He wasn't overly fond of being shackled, but being stripped nearly naked – again – and then shackled was not on his list of favorite things to do. Well, not in these circumstances.

God help him, he sounded like Jack.

Well, it was a bit kinky. Silently, he shook his head to free himself of that train of thought. He, the Doctor, was not kinky. He didn't have time for romance, let alone kinky. There was too much to do, too much to see, too much pulling him in every direction for him to stop and be…well, kinky.

Although…

He still hadn't tested the boundaries of this incarnation, had he? Maybe he was kinky.

Blinking, he shook his head again. This was not the time to be mulling this matter over. This was the time to be incredibly concerned that he was half naked, chained, and being led on a leash by a supposed Time Agent that he barely trusted. He should be worrying about getting to Rose, not worrying about being kinky.

He felt his mind go blank at the combination of 'Rose' and 'kinky' together, and he was pretty sure he'd blushed.

What in hell…? He didn't blush! He was the Doctor! The Doctor does not blush! Nine hundred years of travel with companions – which had included plenty of women – and never once had anyone made him blush. Where in hell was all this coming from?

Taking a deep breath as he plodded along behind Neera, he searched his mind. Something felt a bit…off. Like he was picking up psychic interference from something, or someone.

But before he could figure it out, they arrived at their destination, which jerked him back to reality. Back to half-naked, shackled reality.

Fan-bloody-tastic.

The Southern Gate of the Duke's palace reminded the Doctor of the ancient Ishtar Gate in Babylon back on Earth. It was sort of modeled in the Mesopotamian style, the bricks painted that same shade of blue that desert-dwellers everywhere in the universe seemed to love.

Neera was presenting paperwork to the guard stationed at the servant's entrance. Well, actually, if one wanted to be precise about things, Neera was feeding the guard a load of bullocks coated in psychic paper, but it seemed to be working. After a bit of teeth-and-cleavage-flashing, Neera managed to convince the big burly brute that she was an entertainer hired for the evening, and that the Doctor was, in fact, her slave.

Why had he agreed to this again?

'Cause it's kinky, said his brain.

He firmly told his brain to shut up. Once inside the palace, Neera fell into step beside him. "Alright," she whispered, "once we're passed the third level, then it's on through another security checkpoint, and then we get an audience with the Duke's chamberlain. After that, we can get into the service area, and those corridors run all through the palace. I'll cover you while you find Rose, and take care of any problems."

"Are we anticipating problems?" he whispered back.

"You're the trouble-magnet, Doctor, not me," she replied out of the corner of her mouth as she nodded to some passerby in the palace courtyard. "Long as you stick to the plan, we should be in the clear. I've arranged a distraction."

"Was that who you were on your wristcom with earlier, the distraction-maker?"

"Yes."

"Are you going to tell me who it is?" he raised an eyebrow.

"No."

He frowned. "Why are you helping me, again? And don't give me the sentimental bollocks again."

She pressed her lips together in irritation. "Two primary reasons. One: You're a Time Lord, and I know enough to know that you don't say boo to a Time Lord. Two: I want you two out of my hair so I can take care of this revolution without any of the trouble that follows you around."

"You seem to know a bit about me, for someone I don't know at all."

"You know me," she corrected, "but you don't remember me."

"Yeah, remind me again why I'm believing this story? I know I bought it at the time, but the more I mull it over, the less I'm sure."

"You believe me because it's the truth," Neera said, looking him straight in the eye.

He held her gaze for a moment, then nodded in satisfaction. He still wasn't entirely sure he trusted her methods, but she wasn't malicious.

And she was telling the truth, which left him in a bit of a quandary. He'd known there were gaps in his memory; bits of his life directly before, during, and after the Time War that had been shut away somewhere in his head. It had either been the work of his own subconscious or a result of the regeneration into his ninth body. He'd never been entirely sure.

Considering that he didn't even remember being wounded, or why he even regenerated at all, he was leaning towards the latter explanation.

Even Time Lord brains were delicate things at times.

"Lead on," he told Neera.

……………………………………………………………………………..

Rose sat stiff as a board in the elegant dining chair. Her 'dress' had turned out to be another Space Whore Extraordinaire ensemble, and she was afraid that if she moved (or breathed) she'd fall out of it.

Why did it always have to be her that ended up half-naked? At least this time she wasn't shackled. Half-naked and shackled was the worst.

At least this wasn't as embarrassing as that time with the previous incarnation of the Doctor. Thankfully, the aliens on that world (she'd come to think of them affectionately as the Chicken-Roaches) had possessed the decency to chain her facing the wall rather than away from it. She was eternally grateful that she'd never seen the Doctor's facial expression when he'd charged through the cell door to rescue her.

Though, it had taken her an entire week to convince him to stop singing "Blue Moon" every time she walked by. Naturally, the convincing part of it consisted of her stealing every single towel she could find on the TARDIS while he was taking a shower. And his clothes. And she'd locked the wardrobe room.

When he'd stumbled out of the bathroom, dripping wet and naked as the day he was born, she'd just walked by him, whistling and twirling the TARDIS key on her finger. As he'd cleared the water from his eyes, she'd glanced over her shoulder and chirped "Bit cold in here, is it?" and continued walking.

That had shut him up.

At the memory, a small smile graced her face, and she heard a voice say, "You are a pretty thing when you smile, aren't you?"

And she was back to reality.

Rose lifted her head up and looked down the length of the long dining table. At the far end the Duke of the Gamma Sector was seated, in all his glory.

He was handsome, she'd give him that. But there was something about him that made her skin crawl. When the Duke smiled, it never reached his eyes. When he said something, she had the feeling it was rehearsed somehow.

It reminded her of that Fake Mickey back in London, when she'd first met the Doctor. There was something…not right. Like the Duke was an imitation of someone.

Or an imitation of a human.

She continued small talk with the Duke as the meal was served, and pushed food around her plate to make it look like she was eating. As they discussed various polite topics, skirting around the issue of her being kidnapped and forced into slavery, Rose's mind worked in overdrive.

The original plan she and Amara had come with consisted of three parts. Part one: Amara distracted and took care of the Duke's private guards. Part Two: Rose gassed the Duke and escaped into his private tunnel that ran below the palace and out into the city. Part Three: Rose would then send a signal to rebellion members, and let them into the private tunnel while Amara and a few others stationed inside the palace would cover them as they emerged inside.

As much as Rose had been hesitant to agree after he last experience in changing history without the Doctor's permission, it had been the only way out of the palace. At least, the only way Rose had been able to find on short notice. She had every intention of escaping before the Duke could 'require' any more than a meal from her, and that left her with a tight time schedule.

But if this wasn't the Duke…

Rose smiled another entirely fake smile and swallowed nervously.

Lowering her head for a moment as she pretended to study her plate of food, she closed her eyes and briefly concentrated on Amara's face. Amara had told her how to focus on the telepathic bond enough to send thoughts, but Rose still wasn't sure she'd be able to do it.

She had to try, though. If this wasn't the Duke – if this was some kind of stand-in – then it meant someone was on to them.

Rose only hoped it wasn't too late for Amara.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

It had taken longer than either of them would have liked, but finally the Doctor and Neera had cleared the final security checkpoint and gained access to the service area. Now that they were safely inside a cozy little broom cupboard (or what passed for one in the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire – Broom Bots instead of brooms, really), Neera handed him a shirt and unlocked his shackles.

No more half-nakedness and shackles. Fantastic!

He rubbed his wrists and scowled as Neera passed him the sonic screwdriver. "You didn't have to use such small cuffs."

"Well, your wrists are so dainty…"

"Oi! I do not have dainty wrists!"

"You do. Perfect for tea parties." She smiled. Evil woman. "Go find your friend so we can get the hell out of here."

As he pulled the shirt over his head, his elbow brushed the wall of the closet. That was weird. Why were there wires on the broom closet wall?

"Why are there wires on the broom closet wall?" he asked no one in particular.

Neera paused in assembling a weapon from assorted pieces stashed in her clothing. "What?" she asked.

"Wires," he repeated, moving the deactivated Broom Bots out of the way. "What are they connected to?"

She shrugged. "Power? Central heating? How should I know?" The weapon clicked together as the final piece was connected, and she smiled happily. Time Agents and their special little toys, he marveled.

He never did trust gimmicky gadgets.

Finally he got a good look at the wall, and at the apparatus the wires protruded from. "This is no central heating," he said.

Neera looked at it and frowned. "Wait, that's not…"

"Oh, yes it is." He turned to look at her. "So when you said 'distraction', what sort of distraction did you mean? Did you want the kind that goes boom? Because this is one hell of a distraction, and it's about to go boom."

"That's a trillium bomb," Neera winced. "That's not just boom. That's big boom."

"Well," he nodded, "this just went from bad to worse." He fiddled with the sonic screwdriver for a moment, then shook his head in frustration. "The seal on the casing is deadlocked, I can't get into it. Looks like your revolution's going to go off without a hitch after all, and even earlier than you planned."

"I'll throttle that bastard," Neera moaned.

"Your distraction-maker?" he asked.

"Long story, tell you later," she said, pushing him aside to get a closer look. "Hang on, I know this tech. I can't stop it, but…yes! I can reprogram the timer back at least fifteen minutes. That gives you enough time to find Rose and get her out."

"If I run," he added.

"I hear you're good at that."

"What about you, Neera?"

She grinned. "Oh, don't worry. I'm way harder to kill than that. At the end of the universe, it'll be me and the cockroaches. Go!"

…………………………………………………………………………………..

_Rose_.

The thought came into her head suddenly. It was Amara's voice, and yet not a voice at all. Rose's breath hitched in her throat and she felt a sudden wave of panic and fear that was both hers and not hers.

Rose, run! Get out of there! It's not him, its… 

The warning was cut short by a burst of pain. Rose cried out in spite of herself, and slid out of her chair, doubled over in agony. She felt fire across her abdomen, and a sharp throbbing pain in her back.

The Fake Duke stood and strode down the length of the table to stand over her. "Looks like there's more to you than meets the eye, little yellow one."

Rose watched in horror as the Fake Duke seemed to come apart and reassemble in front of her eyes. With a hiss of machinery and scrape of metal it had reformed itself, and it didn't look pleasant. In fact, it looked to designed to be anything but pleasant.

So it was a robot after all. And not just a robot, a bleedin' Transformer, of the S&M variety. Fantastic.

Rose sucked in a breath and tried to stand, but the pain was increasing. It was Amara's pain, not hers, she knew that…but it felt as real as if it were her injuries. If she could just focus, she could still maybe get away.

"The Duke's enemies will be exterminated from this realm, starting with you, little yellow one."

Exterminated. Oh, she hated that word.

But before she even had a chance to think, the world seemed to suddenly stop and shake itself. The palace floor beneath her buckled and jumped, the windows came crashing down in a shower of glass, and a sonic concussion knocked everything standing in the room to the floor…

…including the Fake Duke.

_Run!_ Said a voice in her mind, but it wasn't Amara's. It was a very different but familiar voice.

So she ran.

……………………………………………………………………………………

The Doctor ran down the deserted hallway, wondering at its emptiness. He held Rose's phone (converted into a pocket-sized human-finder) out before him, letting it dictate which turns he took in the twisted maze of service corridors.

Without warning, a sharp pain hit him in the back and he doubled over. Gasping for breath he turned around, looking wildly around the corridor, but there was no one. No one at all.

Feeling his back, he found there was no wound. What in hell?

The pain came again, this time spreading to his abdomen. Then there was a sickening crunching sound and he knew his wings had just been broken, and he cried out in pain and anguish.

Hang on.

He didn't have wings.

Taking a deep breath, the Doctor closed his eyes and let his mind relax. There was something wrong. Something…aha! The pain had been telepathic. Something or someone was telepathically broadcasting and he'd picked up on it.

But how? There were a lot of telepathic races in the universe, including his own, so he kept his mind firmly under lockdown specifically to prevent this sort of thing. No matter how strong the signal, there was no way he should be picking it up on anything other than the psychic paper.

The psychic paper! He was a genius!

Neera had been using psychic paper, as most Time Agents did (he'd picked it up himself after visiting the fifty-first century). She'd given him a piece, it was here somewhere…he patted himself down, and found it tucked in the back pocket of his trousers.

He looked at it and his left heart skipped a beat.

It read: _Rose, run! Get out of there! It's not him, its…_

And then the pain hit him again.

The Doctor fell to his knees, eyes squeezed shut against the blossom of pain spreading behind his eyes. It passed after a moment and he took in another steadying breath.

Mystery solved then. Someone was telepathically linked to Rose, and because of her link to the TARDIS (which he was also linked to) his brain was picking up on the feedback. Silly human brains, they were so small…so hard to maintain more than one healthy psychic connection at once.

It was why he'd hooked her up to the TARDIS to begin with; to prevent anyone else from doing the same. Apparently whoever had made the link had found a way around it.

Either that or Rose's mind was a little different now that she'd gone and touched the Time Vortex.

Oh, he really didn't even want to think about that. That was a whole other guilt trip he could go on later, after he found Rose and got her to safety.

He concentrated and managed to push back the bit of his mind that was receiving the telepathic signal so that he could focus on Rose. Carefully, he got to his feet and looked back down at Rose's phone. She was somewhere up ahead, and close.

As he picked up the pace a bit, he felt a twinge at the edge of his mind. It wasn't telepathic this time, it was more familiar. He'd explained it once to Rose, and she'd laughingly named it his "Spider-sense".

Time was fluid, always shifting and running in swirls and eddies and rapids. While they couldn't exactly see the future, Time Lords could sense things. Right now he was sensing a change, a rushing feeling, like something big was about to happen. As if he were floating down a river and the current suddenly picked up and he could hear the roaring of a falls straight ahead.

Trouble? Oh, yeah.

He was thrown against the wall as the building shook. Sliding to the floor, he tried to steady himself as the shockwaves passed. An explosion? But that hadn't been big enough for the trillium bomb!

This was something else, then. Some other explosion. Panic gripped him. He need to find Rose. Now. Events could spiral out of control as much as they liked as soon as he found her and could keep her safe.

As he began to run, he threw his mind open wide, trying to feel for Rose through this telepathic stranger. The TARDIS link wasn't strong enough, but this link might be enough to…

Yes! He could feel her! And…oh, she was in pain, but…it wasn't hers, it was the stranger's. But she was in danger, she knew she was in danger and she was looking for a way out.

Oh, Rose.

_Run._

………………………………………………………………………….

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

Time Agent Neera Vasuda had worked with a lot of insane people over the years. Her last partner, Jack Harkness, had been tame compared to some of the others. Even with his philosophy of "If you can't kill it, shag it" Jack hadn't come anywhere near the borders of insanity she'd experienced with some people.

Take this latest little stunt, for example, and the man behind it.

Only a man as truly, certifiably insane as Jaren Marks would even consider setting off another explosive device within a ten mile radius of a trillium bomb.

Of course, only she would be truly insane enough to ask someone as crazy as Jaren Marks to provide her with a diversion. Brilliant planning, that.

Neera pushed a chunk of wall off her leg, and got up gingerly. There were no injuries, to either her own body or – more importantly – the trillium bomb. The casing to the bomb had a dead-locked, air tight seal and was encased in an inertial dampening field. Good technology.

Her technology, in fact. Technology she'd happily passed along to the leader of the Sunisa Rebellion: one cheerfully mad half-human named Jaren Marks.

"I hate you," she moaned, picking up her pack.

A brown-haired head poked inside the doorframe of the now-collapsed broom cupboard. "How'd you know I was here?" Jaren asked.

"Educated guess, you twit," she replied. "Can I ask you something?"

Jaren helped her out of the rubble. "Of course," he said, handing her a spare weapon, "only ask quickly, because our plans have accelerated a bit."

"Well in that case, forget the question."

As he turned to look at her, Neera drew back her arm and socked him squarely in the jaw. He stumbled backwards, clutching his face. "What in hell –"

"That," she said, "was for blowing me up."

Jaren blinked his big blue eyes at her. "You weren't exactly supposed to be here."

Neera paused. "Wait…what?"

"You," he repeated, as if talking to a simpleton, "were not supposed to be here. You were supposed to be back in the desert picking up strays and getting ready for tonight."

"I was," she said, "but I sent a message…which you obviously didn't get."

"Obviously not," Jaren replied. "Only message I got was the sizzling end of a laser gun when the Duke's guards bust into our city hideout. They're on to us, and we've got to move quickly if this is still going to work."

"Shit." Neera ran a hand through her shortly cropped hair. "They're here."

"Who?" Jaren moved closer. "Who's here, Neera?"

"This isn't the time or the place." They'd found her. She thought she'd gone back far enough to avoid them; far back enough to foil their plans but still stay out of their reach.

Apparently, she'd been wrong.

"But you will tell me," he said firmly. "I'm sick of this, Neera. I know you're not who you say you are. I know you've lied to me from the beginning. The others think you're a traitor, and they think I'm only trusting you because I'm letting my groin do the thinking for me. I want to prove them wrong, but I need the truth."

She nodded, distracted. "Later. We need to get out of here, first. I should leave the Doctor to fend for himself, but I promised…shit! Where's Jack when you need him?"

"What doctor? Who? Neera," Jaren gripped her shoulders. "Stop not making sense and start acting sane, please."

That caught her attention. "Says the man who nearly set off a trillium bomb prematurely!"

He grinned. "Give me some credit, I knew where to place that other explosive."

Neera grinned back in spite of herself. He was good, she'd give him that. And he'd unknowingly bought her the time she needed to still make this work. Quickly, she grabbed the back of his head and kissed him deeply. Jaren reeled a bit as she pulled away, blinking dazedly at her.

"That," she said, "was for being brilliant. Let's go, we've got some of our people still trapped in here. We need to get them out before the guards recover and find them."

…………………………………………………………………………….

Rose cursed all creators of footwear as she raced down the hallway. Apparently whatever had caused the explosion hadn't been big enough to bring down the palace. She didn't know what it had been, but the palace was still standing which mean she could still find a way out, and that was all she really cared about.

That made two times. Two times she'd been blown up since she met the Doctor. Twice for actual explosions, God knew how many near-misses and nearly-blown-to-bits there had been.

She paused momentarily and tugged off the gilt sandals, chucking them to the side. She'd be better off running barefoot. Hell, given her outfit, she'd be better off running naked, but that wasn't about to happen.

She took off again, only to stop once more at an intersection of hallways. Shit. She had no idea which way to pick. Amara had told her to take the secret tunnel, but that had gotten blocked off in the explosion, and now she had no idea how to get outside the complicated palace.

Desperately, she felt around her mind for Amara but couldn't sense anything. That made her worry a bit. She'd promised Amara that she'd get to see her home world again, and Rose was determined to keep her word.

"Right," she said to herself. "I'm going to pick left. Why? Because it's got less letters, that's why. Who needs A-Levels when you've got sterling brains like mine?"

…………………………………………………………………………..

The Doctor skidded to a halt at an intersection of hallways. Holding out Rose's phone, he tried to pick up on her bio-signal again, but now there was too much interference from the explosion. Stupid Earth technology…always so susceptible to electro-magnetic disturbance.

He pocketed the now-useless phone and looked down each corridor. "Okay," he said to himself, "I'm going to pick right. Why? Because it's got more letters than left. Never tell me I'm not brilliant."

…………………………………………………………………………..

There was a burst of what sounded like gunfire, and Rose's head whipped around as she ran, trying to determine which way the noise had come from. Were they guards? Were they looking for her?

Not paying attention to where she ran, her foot caught against a fallen piece of statuary and she tumbled to the ground. Her ankle twisted violently and she yelped in pain. Her palms scratched and scraped against the bits of fallen stone as she pushed herself up.

Wonderful. Her chin was bleeding, too. Oh, that was just brilliant. Of course she fell and twisted her ankle. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Gingerly, she touched her ankle and moved it round experimentally. Gasping, she felt faint from the pain for a moment, but then it subsided. Rose didn't think it was broken, but it was definitely injured.

………………………………………………………………………

The Doctor paused as he heard something that sounded like gunfire. It was coming from up ahead. Vaguely in the back of his head, he felt a burst of pain.

_Rose._

Both his hearts plummeted into his stomach. No. He wasn't going to lose her like this. He wasn't going to lose her at all.

Running faster, he paused again only as he passed a guard that had been hit in the head with a falling piece of stone. The Doctor tugged the dead guard's weapon from him and checked to make sure it was loaded.

He wasn't going to lose Rose.

………………………………………………………………………

"Rose!" a familiar voice yelled.

She jumped slightly and whipped around. Amara was stumbling towards her, dripping blood. "Amara," she said weakly, holding out a supporting hand.

Amara grasped it thankfully and leaned against the wall next to Rose. "Fine…fine shape we're in," she rasped.

Rose almost laughed. Almost. "What happened? Your wings…"

Amara grimaced. Her wing bones had all been broken, and the thin membrane stretched between them was torn and bleeding. She had a long gash down one cheek, and her free hand was clutching what looked like some kind of stomach wound.

"I can die later," Amara panted. "I promised I'd get you free, first. Come on."

Taking Rose's hand, she led the limping human down another hallway and pointed. "Up…up ahead, there's a chamber with another secret passage. That one leads under the city's sewers and out into the north desert. We…have…we have people out there. Waiting to pick us up."

"You're coming, Amara. You're coming with me," Rose said firmly.

Amara nodded. "I…yes. I just…in case I pass out, you need to know where to go."

"Okay," Rose said, shifting her weight on her good foot and putting a hand on Amara's shoulder. "Tell me, then."

"You…get down!" she snapped, pushing Rose to the ground.

Rose painfully hit the floor as another burst of gunfire sounded. As she looked up, it almost seemed to happen in slow motion: a bullet tore through Amara's shoulder, then another through the center of her chest, and the last found her abdomen. She fell backwards, and the blood that sprayed up from the wounds seemed to hang in midair like deep red rubies before falling.

Rose caught her as she fell, cradling her head. "I'm sorry," Rose whispered, "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry," she kept repeating, bending her forehead down to touch Amara's as the other woman's breath rattled in her lungs.

Belatedly, Rose looked up and saw the man who'd fired. He was so young, only a boy. Just a boy with a toy gun. He'd probably joined the Duke's Guard for the same reason Mickey had always wanted to join the army; the uniforms looked cool.

The boy stared back at Rose, his gun wavering in his hand. "By…by the order of the Duke," he said, his voice cracking. Had he even reached puberty yet? "By the order of the Duke, you are ordered to stand down and…and surrender."

It felt like some sort of dream. Some sort of nightmare. "No," she said.

"But…I have to shoot you if you don't surrender. I'm…I'm supposed to shoot you."

"You're just a boy."

The gun wavered more. "I have to shoot you!" The boy was crying.

"No. You're just a boy. You shouldn't be a killer."

……………………………………………………………………….

"I have to shoot you!" he heard, rounding a corner at full speed.

"No. You're just a boy. You shouldn't be a killer." That was Rose's voice! It was just down this hall and around the next corner. He was almost there.

Almost…

There was a gunshot.

"NO!" the Doctor shouted. "Rose! ROSE!"

……………………………………………………………………

Amara's hand dropped, the small weapon falling from her hand. The boy-Guard fell in a heap on the floor. A dead heap.

Rose looked down at Amara. The other woman's amber eyes filled with tears. "Rose…" she whispered. "Don't let me be buried."

"Shh," Rose managed between tears. "You'll be okay. You'll go home, it'll be okay, you'll see…you'll…"

Amara managed a smile and lifted a hand to Rose's cheek. "Take me home, then, Rose Tyler. Take my soul home."

One last breath, and she was dead in Rose's arms.

"No," Rose moaned, sobbing. She hugged Amara's dead body to her, as if she could share some of her own life, willing her to just breathe again.

"Oh, Rose," said a gentle voice, and Amara was being pulled away from her. She grasped the body tighter, sobbing so hard she could barely get breath. "Rose," said the voice again, and a warm hand touched her face. "Let go, Rose. We'll take her home."

Rose let go, and Amara was lifted away from her. She wiped the back of her hand across her face, mixing dust and dirt with the tears, but she didn't care. Standing carefully, she braced herself against the wall and looked at the Doctor, who was holding Amara's body as though it were the most precious thing in the universe.

His large eyes were full of understanding, and it was too much for Rose to bear. She looked away, trying to steady her breathing. "There's a tunnel," she said, once she could speak again. She pointed to where Amara had told her. "Over there. She said it leads out to the north desert and there are people there."

The Doctor nodded. "The revolutionary forces. We'll go out that way, then get to the TARDIS. We'll take her home, Rose."

Rose nodded, finally lifting her gaze to the Doctor's again. "Thank you."

………………………………………………………………….

Neera ran a hand through her short hair, sighing heavily. She and the Doctor stood outside the TARDIS, looking back over Sunis City. "I'm sorry we lost her," Neera said softly. "She was an incredible person."

"She saved Rose's life. Twice in that hallway, and who knows how many more times inside the palace," the Doctor said.

"Sounds like Amara."

The Doctor swallowed and looked back into the TARDIS, where Rose sat curled up in the consol chair. "They shared something," he mused. "Amara's race…they're telepathic, aren't they?"

Neera nodded. "Yeah. They're selective about who they bond with, though. Rose must be special."

He nodded, throat tight. "She is."

They were silent for a moment, the distant fire sirens and noises of a city in turmoil breaking into their thoughts. "When is the final stage of the revolution?" he asked. "The storming of the palace?"

"Tomorrow night," she said. "Tomorrow morning, bombs will go off at all major government buildings and the Duke will try to contain the situation by enforcing strict martial law. It will have the opposite effect, and the city will rise up against him. By nightfall the palace will be overwhelmed by angry mobs, and the Duke will be dragged out into the city square and hung."

"He dies," the Doctor said.

"That's what generally happens when someone gets hung, yes."

He shook his head. "No. Your friend, Jaren Marks. He dies. I remember that. He's the ringleader of the revolution, and he's killed in a police riot tomorrow. He does something…saves someone; a child, I think. It's what incites the first uprising among the city populace."

Neera winced and looked away. "I know."

"You love him," he pointed out. "You love him, but he has to die for your mission to succeed."

She turned away from him. "What's your point?"

The Doctor opened his mouth, then closed it again. "I guess I don't have one," he said finally.

"Yes, I love him," she said. "I've shared his bed, I've been at his side for two months now. We've lain awake at night, talking about a future that doesn't exist for us, only he doesn't know that. He talks about children and buying farmland somewhere. He talks about leaving Sunisa, but he never will," she said, hugging herself against the rising chill in the wind.

"You could change that," the Doctor pointed out, studying her. "You know you could. There's always a chance time will work it out, substitute someone else. Timelines are fluid."

She laughed, bitterly. "So this is a test, is it?"

"How do you mean?"

Neera leveled a look at him. "You know as well as I do that I can't risk any further changes to the timeline. I've already changed it as much as I possibly can without risking a temporal tear. Jaren has to die. And yet…I still love him. I love a man that I have to ensure dies tomorrow. Happy?"

"Not yet," said the Doctor, and she stared. He took a step closer to her. "You're not working for the Time Agency any longer, are you, Neera?"

She swallowed and looked away. "I don't know what you mean."

"Don't lie to me," he insisted. "Jack left the Agency because they stole two years of his memories. I'm betting you found them, didn't you?"

Neera stood stock still.

"You found them," he continued, "and they contained something dangerous. Something you now know. And you ran away from the Agency before they could do the same thing to you."

She looked at him. "How do I know I can trust you?"

"Jack did."

Neera took a deep breath. "It's the Agency itself. I don't know everything, but they've been doing things. They've been altering timelines, steering the future towards some end that I don't completely understand, apart from the fact that it's bad. Very bad."

"How do you mean?"

She shook her head. "I don't know, but I caught a glimpse of the future they were planning out, and it was…terrible. There's something behind the Agency, and I don't think it's human."

He frowned. "What were they planning to do here?"

"I'm not entirely certain of that, either. I know they're trying to thwart the Revolution. Well," she corrected herself, "actually, I think they want the revolution to start. I just think they want it to fail."

"Why?"

"Because it'll crush the spirit of the population. It'll crush them, and it'll make them easier to control. And that's their first big step to whatever it is they're planning."

Neera fell silent and the Doctor studied her for a long moment. "Are you on your own in this, Neera?"

She shrugged uncomfortably. "I'm the only one who knows. Jack knew, and look what they did to him. How could I tell anyone else? How could I let them know that I was on to them?"

He raised an eyebrow. "But you could have just run away. Turn the other cheek. Let them go on with it."

She stared at him in confusion. "How could I have done that?"

The Doctor smiled widely at her. "It never occurred to you, before, did it?"

Neera shook her head. "It's not an option. They have to be stopped."

"Yes," he agreed, "they do."

"We'll come back," said Rose's voice.

They both turned to see her standing in the TARDIS doorway. "How long have you been there?" Neera asked.

"Long enough," Rose said firmly. "We'll come back. We're taking Amara's body home to her family and then we're coming back. I'm coming back," she added, lifting her chin and staring at the Doctor, almost challenging him to defy her.

They stared at each other for a moment. "Well," he said at last, "that's convenient, then, because I'm coming back as well."

Rose nodded, then turned around and went back inside the TARDIS. The Doctor sighed heavily, then looked at Neera as she placed a hand on his shoulder.

"She's hurting," Neera said. "Give her time."

He laughed without much humor. "Thankfully, I seem to have a lot of that."

He went inside the TARDIS, closing the door behind him. Neera stood back as the ship dematerialized, holding a hand to her brow to block the fading sun as she watched the TARDIS disappear.

"Hurry back, Doctor," she whispered.

……………………………………………………………………………..

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

Rose felt as though she were walking in a dream. Almost like she was outside her body, watching herself go through the motions of everything. She sat calmly through the Doctor's medical attentions to her ankle and bruised hands. He didn't ask her any questions, and she didn't offer any answers.

She didn't say anything as he cleaned up Amara's body and wrapped it in a length of white gauzy material from the wardrobe room. He began to repair the shattered wings, telling her that it was an Ellurian superstition; one's soul couldn't fly to heaven with broken wings.

Elluria, that was the name of Amara's world. Such a beautiful name, but it felt empty.

Rose felt a bit empty. She didn't help the Doctor repair the wings, but neither did she leave the room.

After he was done, she did leave, but only to shower and change her clothing. She didn't even bother to wear a towel from the bathroom to her room, nor did she bother to close the door as she got dressed. Rose felt herself doing all these activities, but it was almost like she was on autopilot. Just going through the motions.

The Doctor watched her, concerned, but he didn't say anything to her as she entered the control room. "We're here," he said softly. "I've contacted Amara's family. They're meeting us outside."

She nodded and he retrieved the body from the infirmary, carrying it delicately so as not to disturb the newly restored wings. They left the TARDIS, the Doctor carrying Amara and Rose only a step behind him. As they stepped out into the bright sunshine, Rose thought somewhere in the back of her mind that this world was every bit as beautiful as it sounded.

She just didn't care too much.

………………………………………………………………………………….

The Ellurian night was cold, but just as beautiful as the day. The stars in the sky shone brightly, and the field they were in was covered in a blue-gray grass-like plant that reflected the starlight. It looked like a sea of shimmering silver.

Amara's family stood around the funeral pyre, nursing the flames higher by fluttering wing motions. The women were singing a low, keening song of grief while the men would chant poems from time to time; ancient rites of passage for the soul.

Still, Rose felt numb. The only thing she could really feel was the heat of the pyre flames as they embraced Amara's flesh.

Amara's mother came over to where she stood to the side with the Doctor. She reached for Rose's hand and cradled it between her own. She looked just like Amara, except her coloring was different. Amara had been all warm hues; amber and gold and fiery red. Her mother was an iridescent lavender with mint-green eyes and long white hair. It was almost hard to believe such beautiful creatures existed.

"Thank you, dear little flower," she said in a lilting voice. "Thank you for bringing my daughter's soul home."

Rose nodded and said "I promised her she'd go home again." But still…there was no pain behind the words, no sorrow. Just…nothing.

The woman walked away, back to her family. Rose was aware of the Doctor looking at her intently, but she couldn't bring herself to look away from the flames. They were the only things that seemed real.

She only felt them. Only felt the fire, as if it were the only thing she would be able to reach out and touch. Everything else felt as wispy as an illusion.

Rose felt herself pulled towards the fire, though she never moved an inch from where she was standing. She felt as though the fire were drawing something out of her; lifting her somewhere, and she rode the flames like Mary Poppins on a gust of wind…she felt…

…she felt free…

"Rose!"

………………………………………………………………………..

Her forehead felt damp, and there was a gentle pressure on her cheek. Wearily, she opened her eyes to find a very familiar pair of big brown eyes staring back. Blinking once, she croaked, "…hello."

The Doctor, his face inches from hers, cracked a grin. "Hello," he replied. "You alright now?"

Her head hurt. A lot. "My head hurts. A lot."

He nodded. "Psychic trauma. You were connected to Amara when she died. You passed out back at the funeral earlier."

She closed her eyes. "I felt it," she said softly, taking a sip of water from a glass he offered her. "I swear, Doctor, I could feel her…leaving her body. Like the fire really was drawing out her soul or something. It was the strangest feeling."

He peered at her curiously, setting the glass of water aside when she was done with it. "Where are we?" she asked, looking around. Looked like someone's spare bedroom.

"One of Amara's family put us up for the night when you collapsed. Saved me a trip back to the TARDIS lugging you over my shoulder," he smiled cheekily.

She started to laugh, but stopped when the pain flared in her head again. When she moaned softly, the Doctor placed his hands on either side of her head. "Shh," he said soothingly. "It'll be alright."

Rose relaxed as his thumb stroked across her cheekbone in a calming motion. She could feel the pain in her head subsiding; like when her mum used to stroke her hair when she was a kid with a fever, but better. It felt like he was washing the pain out of her head with every breath.

She met his eyes, and suddenly knew how he was doing it. He was touching her mind, somehow. Like Amara, but…deeper. She could just barely feel him doing it, but he was there…at the edges of her mind.

So close. He felt so close. Closer even than his hands on the skin of her cheek. Closer than she'd ever been to anyone before. She wanted to reach out and pull him closer…

With a soft gasp he dropped his hands and pulled away. They stared at each other for a long moment, Rose feeling strangely cold now that he was no longer touching her.

He gave her a quick half smile and took her hand, but the tactile contact wasn't quite the same. "Better?" he asked.

"I…yeah, thanks," she replied, taking a second to find her voice.

"Right, well," he said quickly, "you'd better get a bit of sleep before you try anything as complicated as walking or eating. We'll leave when you feel strong enough."

"Won't we miss it?"

"What?" he blinked.

"The revolution," she said. "Didn't you tell that woman we'd be back?"

He snorted. "Rose. Time machine."

She smiled. "Right. Forgot. Stupid ape."

The Doctor paused at the doorway, then turned around to look at her again, an unreadable expression on his face. "Ape, maybe. Never stupid."

He disappeared through the door, and Rose laid her head back on the pillow, feeling exhausted.

Ape, maybe. Never stupid.

What the hell did that mean?

Men. Didn't matter what species. They were all just blokes in the end.

…………………………………………………………………..

"Neera?" said a soft voice.

She set aside the schematic she'd been studying and turned around. "Jaren," she said, blinking. "Hello."

"Hello," he smiled warmly, shutting the door behind him as he slipped inside her room. If it could be called a room. If it could be called anything but a cave with a mattress and a table, really.

Oh, and a lamp. She had a lamp. That apparently made her special.

"Listen," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm sorry about earlier."

Neera looked away and busied herself checking equipment for the next day. "What do you mean?"

Jaren folded his arms and leaned against the wall, playing idly with a pinned shock grenade. "I shouldn't have snapped at you like that, back in the palace. I shouldn't have questioned you."

She turned around and snatched the grenade out of his grip, tucking it back into its place in her weapons belt. "You had every right. You need to be able to trust the people you work with. And," she added, looking away, "I haven't been honest with you. I can't be completely honest with you. You can take that as you like it."

"I know," he said.

Neera looked at him. "What?"

Jaren sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets. "I know you can't be honest with me. There's something you've been holding back since day one. I could always tell, you know. Not everything about you added up."

"Then why did you trust me?"

He shrugged. "It was easy once I knew you. I knew you weren't a spy, that was good enough for me at first. I thought maybe you'd found the revolution because you were running from something. Getting in a fight is always a good way to lose yourself."

"I suppose," she said with a soft smile.

Jaren pushed himself off the wall, stepping closer to her. "And then," he said in a low voice, "I realized that everything you were doing was helping not only the revolution, but me."

Neera turned away from him, but he stepped up behind her and put his hands on her shoulder. "My good luck charm," he whispered into her hair. "My guardian angel."

In all her missions, in all her failures, in all her mistakes, in all the relationships she'd ever started and broken off, she'd never felt pain like this. Despite her parents' death, despite her brother's suicide, despite Jack just swanning off and leaving her alone, despite everything horrid that she'd ever seen happen to another being, she had never really known what a broken heart really and truly felt like.

She knew now. God, she knew.

Jaren was kissing the back of her neck, setting her skin on fire. Neera knew that she should just walk away from him. Shut him out now, start building that wall around what was left of her heart. She had to sacrifice him to save humanity. As Abraham with Isaac, only there would be no intervening angel to stay her hand.

She could not put out history's flames. She could only stand by and watch. Or be consumed.

By the time Jaren had her shirt off and was pressing her against the wall, his tongue doing mind-numbing things to her body, Neera had decided that it was better to be consumed by fire than die of cold.

………………………………………………………………………….

It was seldom that the Doctor felt cold. He was used to so many radical temperature changes on so many worlds that it really never even registered to his mind. The TARDIS usually kept whatever internal temperature was most convenient to whomever he was traveling with at the time.

He felt cold now, but it had nothing to do with the weather.

Still, he hugged himself against the slight breeze. The Ellurian night was at its coldest point; just before the sun rose. From his chair in the garden he could hear the sounds of early-rising animals beginning to stir, and there was at least one person moving around the house inside.

He glanced back at it, marveling again at the smooth, lovely curves of Ellurian architecture. With its many wide windows and gentle slopes, the house seemed almost a part of the woodland around it rather than something separate.

Most of the lights were still out, though there was one on in the kitchen area. Someone was up early, preparing the morning meal for the household. Rose's room was still dark, though. She was still asleep.

He could reach out and feel her sleeping mind, if he wanted. Just like the way he always touched her hand when he needed reassurance that she was really beside him. He could do that now, only he could touch her mind whereas before he only touched her hand.

The Doctor sighed in aggravation and leaned back into the garden chair, closing his eyes. He hadn't meant to do it. It had been an accident at first; the TARDIS not being able to handle the feedback in Rose's brain from one too many telepathic connections. The wires had gotten crossed, and he'd been pulled into the link between Rose's mind and Amara's.

He opened his eyes, focusing on nothing in particular, and frowned in thought. That link between Rose and Amara should have been severed with Amara's death, but it hadn't been. He didn't quite understand how. Normal survival instinct for the human mind would've been to cut off the dead connection.

But Rose's mind hadn't done that…she'd held on, stubbornly. He sighed, and almost smiled. That was Rose for you. Stubborn to the last bloody breath.

It almost had been her last breath. If he hadn't still been connected to her and able to pull her back, her mind would have been lost last night. She'd have let go of her life without even realizing it.

He shuddered, feeling cold again. This had shaken him more than he'd realized at first. Rose had been in constant danger from the moment she first met him, and it wasn't like she was a stranger to near-death. He didn't like putting her in so much danger, but she'd chosen this life; his life. The first time round, he'd asked her to join him, had held out all the excitement and wonder like a holiday brochure.

But this time, she'd asked to come along. He hadn't persuaded her, hadn't seduced her with promises of adventures to come. She'd seen the wonders the universe could hold already, but she'd also seen the darkness. And she'd been willing to risk it.

What happened last night was different, though. She'd been in grave danger from the moment Amara died, and he hadn't noticed until it was nearly too late. He'd held Rose's limp form in his arms, delving into her mind and trying to bring her back; trying desperately to link her soul back to her body. It was only when he thought that he would fail, when he really and truly thought he would lose her…

Well, he'd realized a lot of things in that half-a-heartbeat. Not the least of which was what exactly Rose's death would do to him.

The thought nearly sent him into a panic even now that she was safe. What had he been thinking? He'd let her in so close, closer he'd ever let anyone, and it was madness.

He had cared for others before, certainly. Had even been in love a few times. But Romana had been different. She was a Time Lord as well. She understood the life he led, and while she'd shared it with him for a while, she hadn't expected much from him. She hadn't really needed much from him.

It was Romana, that was all. Bit of fun, some adventure. A deep friendship that would last, yes, but not a great romance of song and legend. Time Lords just didn't do things that way.

But humans felt things so deeply. It was their nature. Their spark in the universe burned short, but it burned so blindingly bright.

Maybe that's why he'd always had such a fixation on them. He'd always liked things that shined; things that stood out. Like a moth to a flame.

It was only fair he get burned in the end, he supposed.

……………………………………………………………………………..

Rose woke slowly as the warm morning sunshine filtered through the window, sliding across the floor and onto the bed. She felt better rested than she had in a long time.

"Morning, sunshine," said a voice that normally irritated her with its morning cheeriness.

She smiled as the Doctor entered the bedroom, carrying a tray of what smelled like food and two mugs of what was possibly tea. He set it down at the foot of the bed with an exaggerated flourish and grinned when she giggled.

He took one mug for himself and sat down in the chair beside the bed. "How're you feeling?" he asked with a fake nonchalance that didn't hide his concern.

"Better," she admitted. "Much better." Rose started to sit up, but as the bed sheets slid across her chest, she noticed something and froze.

The Doctor paused mid-sip. "What? What is it?" he said quickly, this time not hiding his concern.

"Doctor," she said slowly, "I haven't got any kit on." She peered beneath the thin blankets, then pulled one tight around her chest. "At all," she added.

He stared at her.

She was beginning to feel a bit awkward. She was naked. She felt incredibly relaxed, and…she shifted her body a bit, experimentally…yeah, she felt a bit sore. And she had been a bit out of it last night…

"Um…" she began, a note of panic creeping into her voice. "I didn't…er…I didn't shag anyone in my sleep last night, did I?" Rose finished in a rush, looking anywhere but at the Doctor.

He stared at her some more, trying unsuccessfully not to smirk. "Well," he drawled, "the Ellurians are a very sensual people. They have certain methods of healing that might be considered –"

"Doctor!"

He broke off and took in her expression of outrage before bursting out into laughter. She pulled the blankets tighter around herself, curling her legs beneath her, and gave him her best DEATH glare…which really only made him laugh harder.

"Oh, Rose," he gasped, wiping a tear out of the corner of his eye. "You are ridiculously gullible sometimes."

"So going to kill you," she muttered, flopping back into her pillow.

He stood up and came to sit beside her. "The ground was a bit damp last night when you fell, and your clothes got a bit stained. The woman of the house – Amara's cousin, I think – decided they could do for a wash."

Rose narrowed her eyes. "Who undressed me?"

He cleared his throat. "Well…I did."

"You did?" she squeaked.

"It was only fair!" he protested. "You undressed me before."

"When?"

"Christmas," he said. "I blacked out wearing black leather and woke up in dear old Howard's nightwear in your flat." Her mouth twitched, and his eyes widened as a thought occurred to him. "Oh, no, never tell me it was your mother."

Rose laughed. "No, but it wasn't me, either."

He frowned. "Then who…oh, ugh. You let Mickey the Idiot undress me? I feel so violated, now."

Rose grinned her best naughty grin and the Doctor rolled his eyes. "Right," he sighed, motioning her to sit up. "Come here, then."

She frowned. "What?"

He looked at her. "I'm a doctor, you're a patient. I want to check your head, come here."

Her mouth twitched again. "It's been a while since I played 'Doctor'." She sat up, still clutching the blanket.

"What's that, then?" he questioned, tilting her head and looking at her skull like he had X-Ray vision.

Rose bit her lip, trying not to laugh. "Well, it's a game. Kids play it."

"Oh?" he asked, completely disinterested in the conversation, and still focusing on her head. He got out the sonic screwdriver and held it to her temple for a moment.

"Mm-hm," she said innocently. "I could tell you about it, but it really works best by demonstration."

The Doctor put on his glasses to look at whatever the sonic screwdriver was telling him, then gave a satisfied nod. He removed his glasses and tucked them into his pocket along with the sonic screwdriver. Then he looked at her, something unreadable in his eyes, and leaned forward, nearly touching her face with his, placing one hand on the mattress to the other side of her hip.

"Well, then," he said slowly, never breaking eye contact. "Why don't you demonstrate it?"

……………………………………………………………………….

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

"I could tell you about it, but it really works best by demonstration."

"Well, then," he said slowly, never breaking eye contact. "Why don't you demonstrate it?"

Rose swallowed heavily, her throat suddenly dry. He was so close to her; she could feel the heat of his breath on her cheek. She'd only been teasing him, like they always did. Make a joke, lighten the mood, make a sexual reference just to see his reaction. Oldest game in the books, and one she never really expected to result in anything. Not with the Doctor.

Though she'd always wanted it to. God, how she'd wanted it sometimes.

Was this it, then? Or was he just trying to beat her at her own game?

Oh, no he didn't.

Swallowing again, she bit her bottom lip and broke eye contact, gaze dipping down to his mouth. Okay, that was a mistake. Back up to his eyes. "Well," she said, a bit hoarsely, "the playing field's not exactly even."

Something in his eyes told her that he knew exactly what she was talking about, but he played innocent. "Oh?" he asked, raising his eyebrows.

Damn him. There was no way in hell she was going to back down now.

"Yes," Rose replied, her voice a bit more steady. She still had one hand clasping the bed sheet to her breast, and she lowered it slowly, keeping the sheet tucked firmly under her arm. She looked the Doctor straight in the eye as her hand covered his, and she raised an eyebrow of her own. One way or another, she was going to win this little contest of wills.

"You see," she explained in a mock-patient voice, "in order to participate in the game of 'Doctor' to the…fullest…degree, both participants should be naked."

Rose fully expected him to break there. At the very least, she expected a bit of laughter followed by an insistence that she eat some breakfast and join him downstairs when she was dressed.

But he didn't move.

He lowered his gaze slowly down the length of her, and she found herself holding her breath. When he met her eyes again, her heart leapt against her ribcage as though it was attempting escape. All thoughts of playing games fled her mind, and all she could think was that if he didn't touch her and touch her soon, she just might die.

She felt movement from the hand she was still touching, but didn't break eye contact. Slowly, ever so slowly and deliberately, the Doctor lifted one finger from beneath her hand and lightly dragged it along the inside of her palm.

He watched her, as thought studying her reaction. Rose found she couldn't look at him, and closed her eyes, concentrating on the one feather-light touch. It felt like a spark that ignited the rest of her body. Her lips parted, and a soft sigh escaped.

As if the sigh was the permission he'd been waiting for, he lifted his free hand to her face, letting his fingertips brush the length of her arm and the curve of her shoulder as he did so. Cupping the curve of her cheek he ran one finger along the sensitive part of her ear as his thumb caressed her cheekbone.

She could feel his face so close to hers that she could taste his breath. Though she hadn't had any of the Ellurian tea, she knew now that it tasted of cinnamon and nutmeg and some sweet fruit that was almost like raspberry. She felt a light brush against her lips as he moved his hand over, running his index finger along her bottom lip.

The caress moved over her chin and down her neck, pausing at the hollow where her collarbone started. Ever so gently, his fingers brushed along the ridge of her collarbone, all the way to where it met her shoulder. He then followed the line of her shoulder, and Rose found herself arching towards his touch as his hand flattened against the curve of her breast.

His other hand was suddenly free, and was pressed against the small of her back as she fell gently backwards into the soft pillow. Rose kept her eyes closed, for fear that she would open them to find this only a dream. God knew she'd had these dreams before.

But, oh…they were never like this.

She gasped as she felt the warmth of his mouth pressed against that hollow of her neck. At the same time, one thumb ran up her spine, arching her back even further as the other thumb gently circled her painfully erect nipple. Rose couldn't help but moan as she felt the brush of his tongue against her skin, his teeth nipping the edge of her collarbone.

His one hand moved from beneath her to her side, as his other hand did the same. He held her there, hands pressing into her waist as his mouth moved lower, kissing the skin above her breasts. She found her thighs parting of their own accord as his knee slid between them.

She was still afraid to touch him; still afraid this was an illusion. But as his hot mouth closed around one of her breasts and his tongue paid special attention to her nipple, she lifted one hand and circled it round the back of his neck, his skin feeling so hot to the touch where it normally felt cool.

He was looking at her, she knew. She could feel his gaze on her face, but she still couldn't bring herself to open her eyes.

His tongue found its way to the smooth skin of her stomach, dipping briefly into her navel as his hands slid lower onto her hips. His thumbs pressed into the flesh to either side of her hipbone, and her fingers wound into his hair as his lips dragged across her lower abdomen, his breath as hot as fire on her skin.

Rose could feel the silk of his tie against the inside of her thigh and it sent shivers of anticipation through her body. Her other hand found its way into his hair, grasping it like a lifeline. She could have been mistaken, but she thought she heard a low groan –almost a growl – escape him as her fingernails scraped across his scalp.

His hands dug in tighter on her hips, and the hot wetness of his mouth closed around the very place she was most aching for his touch. Rose cried out and writhed in unbound pleasure with the sensations he was producing. His tongue managed things she could never have dreamed of, and he held her firmly in place against him, his fingers digging into the flesh of her backside.

She gasped again, and she knew she had to do something. She had to do something, anything, to keep hold of reality. She was slipping away from it, tossed about in a sea of sensation, and she would drown in it if she didn't find a way to hold on. Her hands fell away from his head, gripping the mattress as if she could keep herself from falling away from it.

And suddenly he stopped.

Rose almost opened her eyes, but then she registered the feeling of the silk tie on her skin as it moved up her body and then his mouth was on hers. His tongue was inside her mouth, touching hers and as she kissed him back, returning every ounce of passion, she could taste the salt of herself mixed with the sweet Ellurian tea.

Her body was aching for him, but she didn't want to relinquish his mouth and the pure emotion she was feeling. Rose let her arms encircle his neck as his wrapped around her, crushing her to him. She parted her legs and wrapped them around his hips, the fabric of his suit scraping against her skin and making her shudder.

Finally, Rose had to break the kiss to catch her breath. Her forehead touched his, their panting breath mingling. She kept her balance against him with one hand clasping his shoulder while she ran her other hand through his hair, relishing in the tickle of it against the skin of her palm.

"Rose," he whispered, and she could feel his breath form around the shape of her name.

It felt like an anchor. His voice and her name tugged at her mind, insisting on the reality of the situation. This was no dream.

She opened her eyes and stared into his. There was so much in them, so much of him and so much of her reflected. Everything she felt was multiplied exponentially and she found herself wishing that she had an extra heart like him because one just wasn't enough to hold this strong a feeling.

He lifted a hand, very delicately touching her face, and a slow smile crept across his mouth. Rose found herself smiling back and then they both started to laugh uncontrollably as they fell backwards onto the mattress, Rose's legs still entwined around the Doctor's hips.

As his legs straightened out so that his body was pressed against hers, Rose reflected that something needed to be done about his clothing.

She was, however, having problems catching her breath between kissing and giggling like an idiot. He pulled away from her for a moment, catching his own breath, and looked down at her, grinning.

Grinning rather smugly, Rose noted.

She grinned back, a bit impishly. Nope. He wasn't going to win that easily. Not even with that magic tongue of his.

As he leaned down for another kiss, she moved her head fractionally and instead of meeting his lips, she gave him one sharp, playful bite on the chin. He paused, surprised, and she used the moment to lift her body against his, unbalance him, and flip him over onto his back.

He lay there, stunned for a moment, and then grinned again as she settled her weight against him. It was his turn to run his fingers through her hair as she bent down to kiss him, and his other hand caressed her bare back, making her shiver again.

As she kissed him, she tucked a finger into the knot of his tie and pulled gently at it until it was undone. She pulled back from him slightly as she discarded the tie, and he raised an eyebrow at her.

Idly, she began to unbutton his shirt, letting her fingers trail across the skin and slight hair of his chest. She had to slide her weight a bit lower as she pulled the hem of his shirt free, and as she readjusted her position on top of him she felt something that made her gasp and blush a little.

Pausing in her unbuttoning efforts, she looked at him and raised an eyebrow of her own. The Doctor sat up on his elbows and tilted his head questioningly. She smirked a bit, and shifted her hips just enough to press into his, and he closed his eyes briefly.

When he opened them, she was still smirking. "Oh," he swallowed, "that. That's just…you know. Part of the treatment." His lip twitched when he said the last bit, and widened into another grin as she dissolved into laughter.

"Well," she said, recovering enough to undo the last button of his shirt, "in that case," she continued, pulling him into a sitting position so she could free him of jacket and shirt in one go, "I'm glad I'm on your health plan, then."

"We aim to please," he gasped as she pushed him back down onto his back.

She ran her hands over his bare chest, and he lifted his hips into hers, making her gasp. She could feel him beneath the fabric of his trousers, aroused and hot. He lifted his hips again, almost but not quite a thrust, and the tease of it against the bare, aching flesh between her legs was almost too much for Rose to bear.

"Hold on," she gasped, and he laughed as she practically tore at the button and zipper fastenings.

"Easy," he protested, grabbing her hand and sitting upright. "That," he looked significantly downwards, "is just as sensitive as any human's. Well," he corrected himself, "probably more since this one hasn't been used yet."

Rose paused and looked at him, all smiling and pleased with himself. "Oh?" she asked innocently, fingers freed from his hand and running along the waistline of the trousers. "Hasn't been used at all?"

His eyes narrowed slightly. "What are you getting at?"

She trailed her index finger all the way up his stomach, chest, and neck, coming to rest on his jaw line. Gently she tipped his head upwards, brushing his lips lightly with hers. "You did," she said in a low whisper, "take an awfully long shower the other day."

She grinned as he had the grace to look a bit flustered. It was like an adult version of Christmas, and she had a new toy to play with. How could she resist?

"Well," he said, tilting his head to press a kiss to the corner of her jaw, "it was your fault."

Rose tried not to be distracted from the task of removing his trousers, but it was becoming difficult. "I'm not the one," she gasped as his lips moved down her neck, "who used all the hot water."

"No," he admitted, "but I'm not the one who wore a white sundress to a water planet."

She could feel him grinning against her skin. Bastard. Wonderful bastard. "I didn't mean to get soaking wet, you pushed me in!" she protested weakly.

He helped her remove his trousers, kicking off his shoes and socks as he did so. "And why," he said in a husky voice that made her shudder, "do you think," his hands were on her hips again, and she moaned as she felt the wet, hot, and soft skin of his erection against her inner thigh, "that was?"

With one fluid movement, he pulled her against him and thrust into her. She was so ready for him that he slid in perfectly, and she threw her head back, gasping, as they started moving together in a steady rhythm. One of his thumbs dipped down from her hip to touch the hot flesh between them, and her body moved in response, lifting to his touch.

Rose closed her eyes again, the feeling of him moving inside her almost too much to bear. His hands roved her body again and she wrapped her legs tighter around him. His touch was insistent but still gentle, as if he was afraid he'd hurt her somehow.

Fat chance of that happening. The only way he could hurt her now was if he stopped or pulled away from her, and there was no way in hell she was going to let that happen. From the moment he'd first taken her hand in that basement so long ago, she'd been his. She'd given up everything to be with him, not just to see the universe, but to see the universe with him – as he saw it.

He owned her without even knowing it, without ever having asked for it, and it couldn't be helped. But she was claiming him as hers, from this moment onward. No matter how he tried to protest it, no matter how much he tried to pull away from her, she wouldn't ever let go. Till the day she died, she would own him, and part of Rose knew that if she did this – if she held onto him this tightly – she would forever be a part of him.

Even after she died, he would still be hers, and it would kill him.

Could she do that to him?

She opened her eyes and brought her head back down to look at him. He was so beautiful. Her Doctor. He could change his face a thousand times, and he would still be beautiful to her.

He met her gaze, his eyes hot and full of emotions she couldn't even begin to name. His thrusts slowed in pace, but deepened, and Rose cupped his face in her hands, whispering his name – the only name he needed. "Doctor," she moaned, caressing his cheek, her voice full of all the love and anguish and passion and pain she felt but couldn't give words to.

Turning his head slightly, he pressed a hot kiss into the palm of her hand. When he looked into her eyes again, her throat felt tight with emotion. There in his eyes was her answer. She didn't have to claim him. He was giving himself to her.

Rose felt her lower muscles tighten against him, trying to hold him in place inside her. He moaned and thrust harder, grasping her, pulling her as close to him as he physically could. She cried out in both pain and pleasure, which had melted into one poignant sensation, and held onto him as tightly as she could.

As their rhythm increased, it suddenly felt to Rose as if the boundaries between them were slipping. Her cheek pressed against his hair, and she could feel his warm, panting breath in her ear. But it felt like her own breath, and she could not only feel his lips against her throat, but she could tell the taste of her own skin through his tongue.

She could feel the tickle on his skin as her hardened nipples scraped against his chest; she could hear her own moans and gasps as it sounded to his ears.

It was just like earlier…when he had taken away her pain. His mind was touching hers, leaking into hers, and she wondered if he was aware of it; if he could feel her as she could feel him. She began to meet his thrusts with more force, and his strangled cry and the subsequent wave of pleasure and longing and passion in her mind told her that he could.

It was the closest she'd ever been to another living being, but she still wanted him closer. Reaching out, she pulled at him with her mind, feeling him resist. But she was insistent, and he couldn't back away from her. He could only surrender.

And he did. Rose lost all sense of her own physical sensation as his mind flooded hers. She could feel everything that he was; all the pain, the sorrow, sadness, joy, elation, love, loneliness, guilt, anger, hatred, and passion that comprised him. The Oncoming Storm. The Doctor.

And he loved her, then, with everything he had, both darkness and light. She could feel it within him, as it uncurled in his mind from the dark corner he'd kept it locked in. She couldn't help but answer it, giving every portion of her soul to him, everything she'd held back in fear that he would leave her with nothing; she showed it all to him, stood in his mind completely naked of every pretense and illusion.

Their voices blended together as their rhythmic movements together reached a crescendo, and it came crashing down on them in waves of pleasure, both physical and emotional. Rose felt as though she might burst from it. She could feel her own climax, she could feel his, and she could feel hers through him and she could feel every other permutation of their combined pleasure.

Slowly she became more aware of her own sensations than she was of his. The tide of his mind was shifting back, but it still left something behind. She could still feel him, just at the edges; a warm, comforting presence but not overwhelming.

His face was buried in the crook of her neck, and her hands pressed against his back. She could still feel him inside her, and she smiled. His hot breath tickled her neck, and he pressed a kiss to the skin of her shoulder.

"Rose," he murmured against her skin. "Oh, Rose."

He pulled his head back and looked at her. Rose lifted her hand from his back and brushed his unruly hair out of his eyes. He smiled at her, and she smiled back, kissing him softly.

He lowered his head again, leaning against her, and she propped her chin on the top of his head, watching her exhalations parting his hair like the Red Sea. Sighing, she remembered the breakfast tray on the foot of the bed, and twisted around to look at it, certain they'd made a mess.

The Doctor looked in the same direction, pulling back from her a bit. Rose frowned. "Did you move the tray before?" she asked.

"No," he said, confused. "Rose?"

"What?" she looked at him.

He was still staring at the floor. "Where'd my clothes go?"

She opened her mouth, then closed it again, looking back at the floor. "Um…I don't…I…I don't know. Also…"

"Yeah?"

"Why's the door open?" Rose slid off him, wrapping the sheet around herself.

The Doctor tilted his head and stared at the door. "I might have left that open. I don't remember," he said, leaning back onto his elbows and making no effort to cover his nudity. "I would like my clothes back, though. I like that suit."

"I can tell," Rose said dryly.

He flashed her a grin. "It's a nice suit!"

"So's your birthday one," she winked, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before she stood, the sheet wrapped around her like a sarong. She looked out the window. "God, this planet's gorgeous," she said.

"Thank you," said a third voice, and both Rose and the Doctor turned to look at the doorway.

An Ellurian woman stood there, her coloring a muted set of greens and her wings a sparkling gold. Rose vaguely remembered seeing her at the funeral. She was holding two neatly folded stacks of clothing, which Rose recognized as her own black skirt suit and the Doctor's pinstriped one. "I took the liberty of cleaning these for you," the woman said. "And I've set another breakfast for you in the kitchen."

"Thank you," the Doctor said, a bit bemused, "and sorry about that."

The woman looked at him. Rose realized with a flush of mortification that he was still naked and that their previous…activities…were very much still evident. "Sorry for what?" she asked.

"I hope we didn't break anything," he clarified.

The woman smiled. "Oh, no, don't worry about it. Nothing broken. Here are your clothes."

She handed them to Rose, who flushed even deeper red. This woman had come in the bedroom while the two of them had been going at it like rabbits and calmly collected their clothes for the washing. Welcome, Rose Tyler, to the sort of thing that only happens to you.

Rose tucked a piece of her mussed hair behind her ear, unable to look her hostess in the eye. But before she could turn around, she felt a finger beneath her chin, and the Ellurian woman had lifted her face to meet her gaze.

"Child," she said, "physical love is nothing to be ashamed of. Here, among our people, we embrace love in all its forms, and when we feel it, we share it. I rejoice with you in your newfound ecstasy, and I assure you it gives me no embarrassment to have shared it with you, in even such a small part."

Rose gaped at her as she turned away and walked back into the hallway, pausing only to look over her shoulder and remind the Doctor of breakfast. "Leave the sheets," she said, as well, "I'll look after them later."

The Doctor grinned and stood, taking his clothes from Rose. "You want the shower first?" he nodded to the bathroom.

She smirked. "We could shower together."

"I don't think so," he said, pointing a finger at her. "I'm not falling for that. I'm not going to watch you be all wet and soapy while I have to scrub your back for you and what the hell am I saying? Let's go," he grinned, grabbing her hand and practically yanking him towards the bathroom.

Rose squealed with laughter as he tugged her into the bathroom, their clothes lying forgotten on the floor.

……………………………………………………………………………..

Rose lifted her face to the evening breeze that carried with it the scent of some kind of flower that reminded her of lilacs. Behind her, the Doctor was thanking their hostess – Inurid, had been her name – and assuring her that they would visit again. He promised to bring her some alien plants for her garden, as well.

She felt an amused smile tug at her lips. He was just downright domestic sometimes, ever since his regeneration. First Christmas and now gardening tips?

He looked over at her and smiled. She leaned against the TARDIS and folded her arms, smiling back at him. She'd been almost afraid of how he'd react around her now, but it was the same as always. If he were any other bloke, she might have been insulted that he wasn't showing any more signs of affection than he normally did.

But if he were any other bloke, he wouldn't be the Doctor. Rose could still feel him there, at the edge of her mind. It wasn't exactly a union. She couldn't tell what he was thinking, couldn't read his thoughts or anything like that. It just like he was holding hands with her mind…an extension of their usual physical contact.

She liked it that way. It worked for her. It worked for them.

She watched as he pulled a small package from his brown trench coat and handed it to Inurid. The Ellurian woman gracefully bowed her head and clasped the package to her breast, as though it was something precious to her. The Doctor put a hand on her shoulder, and gave her a kiss on the forehead before turning away and walking back to Rose and the TARDIS.

He stopped about a foot from her and tilted his head. "Ready?" he asked.

Rose stood straight, letting her arms drop to her side as he unlocked the TARDIS. "What was that you gave Inurid?" she asked, curious.

He paused as he pushed the TARDIS door open. "An amulet Amara had been wearing. It had an inscription on the back. It had been a gift to Amara from Inurid."

"Oh," Rose said softly. She still felt sadness and a bit of guilt over Amara's death, but like she'd told the Doctor, she had felt something at the funeral. Whether or not it had been real, she had felt Amara's spirit leave her body, and it had given her a feeling of peace.

"You alright?" the Doctor asked gently.

Rose met his concerned gaze and smiled. "Yeah," she said. "She's at peace. She's free now." He raised an eyebrow at her, and she slipped past him into the TARDIS, saying over her shoulder, "'There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy'."

He grinned. "Quoting Shakespeare?"

She frowned. "I thought it was Charles Dickens."

He stared at her for a moment, pausing as he took off his trench coat. When she blinked unknowingly at him, he started to laugh. "What?" she asked, slightly irritated.

"Oh, Rose," he wiped a tear from the corner of his eye and crossed the control room to pull her into a hug. "It's Shakespeare. Dickens was quoting Shakespeare back in Cardiff."

"I never liked Shakespeare."

"I'd never have been able to tell," he snorted, pulling away. "Go on then," he said before she could think of a good comeback, "go get changed."

"For what?" she frowned.

He pulled at a few controls on the TARDIS. "For the revolution, Rose! Did you forget?"

She blinked. "Oh! That's right, we promised that woman we'd be back."

"I keep my promises, Rose, and so do you," he said, turning a bit serious. "But I won't make you do this."

Rose lifted her chin. "You don't have to. I want to do this. I think I need to. Amara may be free now, but there are lots of other people who aren't. Besides, history says there's a revolution, so who am I to argue with history?"

He grinned at her. "Usually the first."

……………………………………………………………………………

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

"Well," the Doctor said, surveying the contents of the emptied trunk, "this ought to come in handy."

Rose frowned at the various assortment of weapons and explosives. "Were you planning an invasion of a small country? Or a moon, maybe?" She added, after opening a second trunk and spotting another pile of the small grenade-looking things.

"Oh, good heavens, will you look at this? I can't believe she didn't take this with her."

Rose stood, dusting off her jeans. "Who? What?"

The Doctor held up a small blow-gun and grinned. "Leela. Remember, I was telling you about her last night."

Rose thought for a moment, then nodded. "The one I said sounded like Xena, Warrior Princess?"

He snorted. "Yup, that's her. She'd run around with these damn poison darts, no matter how often I told her to leave them behind. I'd have everything under control, working out just how I'd planned, and in would rush Leela, shooting everyone in the neck with darts and ruining the whole thing." He smiled in memory. "She'd always be so proud of herself, though. 'Doctor, Doctor! Look! I saved your life!'"

Rose laughed as the Doctor jumped up and down and did a horrendous falsetto. "You said she got married?"

He sighed, setting the blow gun down. "Yeah." Leaning back against the wall of the small room, he crossed his arms. "To another Time Lord."

She pulled another grenade carefully out of the trunk, then paused. "Then…oh," she stopped, realization dawning on her. Time Lord. Time War. "Was she…?"

He was silent for such a long time that Rose went back to removing and carefully stacking the grenades in small piles on the floor, figuring he just didn't want to answer.

"Yes," he said softly, and she looked up at him. "They both were killed. Leela and Andred. And their child." He swallowed as his voice caught, then continued hoarsely, "Their unborn child, Rose. Leela was pregnant, and he never knew. She didn't have time to tell him before she was killed."

Rose closed her eyes. She could feel part of his grief through this strange new bond of theirs, and she knew somehow that this was nearly the first time he'd allowed himself to remember this. It was the first time since it happened that he'd really thought about the individual people he'd lost, separating the strands of grief and learning that each one had its own name and face.

She wanted to go to him and hold him tightly, but she sensed he wasn't done speaking yet. He started talking again, his eyes far away. Rose doubted he even realized he was still in the same room with her anymore.

"It wasn't on Gallifrey, where she died," he was saying. Gallifrey. Was that the name of his world? Strange to realize that he'd never told her that. "Andred was a bit like me, you see. He wanted to be out in the fighting; wanted to be doing something, not just sitting around the Council room debating on the ethics of engaging the Daleks in war like the rest of the bloody Council. And she wanted to be with him."

He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. "It was a small, abandoned moon colony, where we landed. It was just the three of us: me, Andred, Leela. We'd taken a small antimatter bomb off the hands of a couple renegade star traders and our plan was to set off a chain reaction within the moon's core. It was made up of a mineral that would've augmented the bomb's power enough to blast through the Dalek warships."

"What went wrong?" she asked gently.

He gave a small, humorless laugh. "Everything. As usual. Andred claimed it was his fault, I claimed it was mine. Romana had warned me that the Emperor Dalek was clever enough to anticipate the move, but Andred had insisted that we could still manage it if we set the timeline earlier."

Rose bit her lip. "But you walked into a trap."

"Yeah," he said. "Andred came up with a brilliant plan to set off the bomb in the middle of the Dalek fleet, but the catch was that one of us had to be there to wire it into the spaceship's hyperspace drive." The Doctor swallowed heavily. "Andred went."

Rose stood and crossed over to him, taking his hand. He didn't look at her, though, just stared at the floor. "It should have been me, Rose. I knew the Dalek technology better than anyone. It was my idea to strike back at the Daleks to begin with. The whole thing had been my idea."

He looked at her then, and her breath caught at the pain in his eyes. "But he trusted me. He trusted me to get Leela home safely." There were tears in his eyes, now. "I couldn't even do that."

He pulled her close and held on to her like she was a lifeline. Rose wrapped her arms around him, leaning her chin on his shoulder. "She died in my arms, Rose," he whispered. "She wasn't even killed by a Dalek. It was the ship debris, falling from orbit. They made explosions all around us when they hit, and when part of a nearby building fell down, she was crushed by the rubble."

Rose could feel the wetness on his cheek as he pressed his face to her neck. "She lived long enough to make it back to Gallifrey," he continued, his voice muted by her hair. "I gave her treatment on the TARDIS, but it wasn't enough. Nothing was enough to save her life. Or her child's. She asked me to be the godfather, Rose. It was the last thing she said to me."

Rose cupped his cheek and pressed a chaste kiss to his lips. His tears, she realized, weren't salty like a human's. They were bittersweet, and when he pressed a kiss back, opening his mouth and hers with an insistent tongue, she could taste them mingled in with the heady taste of his mouth.

He held her so tightly to him that she could barely get breath, and his grip was digging almost painfully into her back. But she said nothing, and kissed him back with equal force, enough to let him know that she was every bit as alive as he needed her to be.

It was reassuring in a way, to realize that he still needed her. He'd been so different since his regeneration; so excited and enthusiastic, and not as openly wounded as he had been. She'd wondered often if he still needed her the way he had before, and feared he didn't.

But he did. Maybe not as desperately and possessively as he had before, but it was still there. It had just been hidden, tucked away. He'd resigned himself to loneliness, afraid she would leave him like everyone eventually did.

And she would. God, it killed her to know that. But it wouldn't be her choice – it would never be her choice, she knew that now. It would be Time's hand that separated them, not hers. And not his, either.

There was a beeping sound, and they pulled apart, both a little out of breath. "Proximity alert," he explained, wiping a bit of her lip gloss off his mouth.

"I'll finish up here," Rose said, straightening her shirt. "Give me the screwdriver so I can see which grenades are still viable. You said Nitro Nine has a short life, so it stands to reason some of these are inactive now."

He grinned at her, and she was relieved to see it. "See? Told you. Ape, maybe. Not stupid."

"Get out."

………………………………………………………………………………….

"Hello, Neera. We brought presents for the kids."

Neera Vasuda gaped in surprise. She hadn't really expected the Doctor and Rose to return, and she'd resigned herself to fighting this battle alone. She wasn't exactly sure why she'd returned to the garbage dump, except the thought that it wouldn't hurt to check.

The Doctor stepped back from the TARDIS door and waved her inside. "Come on, get in. We've got planning to do."

He turned around and walked back inside. Neera stood in the doorframe a moment, hesitating. She'd gotten a glance inside when they'd left before, but now she was seeing the real size of it.

Finally she stepped inside and nearly pulled her neck as she tried to look in every direction at once. It was huge! And absolutely beautiful. Looking at the control consol, she could identify bits of technology – a cosmic catalyzer there, a harmonic stabilizer there, and was that a temporal wavelength transmitter over to the left?

But the way it fit together was astounding. And beneath it all hummed some power source that had to be unknown to the rest of the universe. The Time Agency, for all their spiffy toys and government funding, could just barely grasp the technology of time travel. And other races she knew that did temporal traveling were in about the same boat. They could do it, but no one really understood everything about it.

No one but the Time Lords.

Neera looked at the Doctor, who was standing beside a smiling Rose. "Never gets old, does it?" he was asking his companion.

Rose grinned. "Nope." She held out a hand to Neera. "Welcome to the TARDIS. What do you think?"

Neera took her hand and shook it, grinning back. "It's a multi-dimensional time ship that operates on the tesseract principal of quantum mechanics and I think it's probably the coolest damn thing I've ever seen in my life."

Rose and the Doctor both laughed while Neera wandered over to look at the control consol. It looked like someone had been to a flea market and stuck on random bits where the proper controls should be. But it all fit, somehow. It looked right.

She trailed a hand along the consol, and behind her Rose snorted in laughter while the Doctor was protesting, "See? It's not just me! Other people like to pet it, too!"

Self-consciously, Neera dropped her hand. "Right," she said, turning to face the other two. "Shall we get on with it, then?"

……………………………………………………………………………….

Rose handed Neera a cup of tea, which the other woman sipped at gratefully. They were grouped around the small kitchen table, which held an assortment of maps and schematics. The Doctor was slumped in a chair, his tie undone and his suit jacket draped across the back of his chair.

He ran a hand through his hair in irritation, making it stand on end. Rose flattened it back down automatically as she took her own seat. "See," he growled, gesturing to the maps, "this is why I never stick around to do this stuff. I'm rubbish at this."

Rose privately agreed, though she didn't say it out loud. He was rubbish at advanced planning. There was really no reason why Rose should be able to beat him at chess every time they played, but she always did. She'd even tried to let him win once. It hadn't worked.

Neera sighed. "If I only knew where they were going to target," she muttered.

"The Agency?" Rose asked.

Neera nodded. "I'm trying to remember how this all plays out. But I've already made some changes to the timeline, so…"

"So there's really no predicting it with any real accuracy," the Doctor cut in. "Which means we have to do some seriously good guesswork here or we risk throwing off any one of these," he gestured to the city map, "little skirmishes. We can't risk that because we can't risk the Imperial Army getting a foothold in the center of the city. It has to go to the revolution, otherwise the palace doesn't get stormed tonight, and if that doesn't happen…"

"We're up shit creek without a paddle," Neera finished, downing the rest of her tea in one gulp.

"Yes, well-put," the Doctor agreed.

Rose chewed her bottom lip for a moment. "Suppose…"

"Hrm?" the Doctor raised an eyebrow.

"Well," Rose started, then hesitated. How stupid would she sound? She looked over at the Doctor, who nodded at her encouragingly. Right. She was Rose Tyler, the Not-So-Stupid-Ape. "Suppose we just…let history take care of history."

Neera frowned. "What do you mean?"

Rose shrugged. "Let the revolution take care of itself while we target the Time Agency. I mean, if they've been interfering while you've been here, and if they'd always planned on intervening with this revolution, then doesn't it stand to reason that they've already got at least one or two agents here already?"

"Yes," Neera said slowly, nodding.

"Then if we can figure out who at least one of them is, can't we get the information we need from them?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes, but it'll take time to locate them, time we don't have. I can't move the TARDIS back, now; we're part of events."

"What about the Duke?" Rose said. "They'll go after him one way or another. If they want the revolution to fail, they'll have to keep him alive, won't they?"

"She's got a point," the Doctor looked at Neera.

Neera nodded her agreement. "Yeah, there's just the problem of finding him. Only Amara had ever actually seen the Duke's face – he kept it hidden. The only other people to see what he looks like have been his victims: criminals he had executed, enemies of the state –"

"And me," Rose said.

They both looked at her. "Say again?" Neera frowned.

Rose stood and took their tea mugs to the sink. Well, it wasn't quite a sink, it was more of a cabinet in the TARDIS kitchen wall, but it cleaned dirty dishes and therefore Rose called it a sink. "When I was in the palace," she said, "they'd already figured out that I was a danger. I was supposed to have dinner with the Duke, so everyone told me, but it ended up being a robot look-alike."

She sat back down at the kitchen table. "Robot?" Neera asked.

"Yeah," Rose said. "I mean, I assume it's what the Duke looked like. As soon as it realized it wouldn't get any useful information from me, it sort of expanded and turned into a sort of…I dunno, a Death-O-Matic. Had all sorts of weaponry on it."

"Robot duplicates," the Doctor mused. "That's Taran technology. I've come across it before. Rose, can you describe some of the weapons?"

She did her best from what she could remember. The Doctor looked at Neera. "Villengard," he said.

"Thought you blew that place up," Rose said.

"Whoever's robot that was must've gotten there before I did," the Doctor mused. "Someone either from Tara or who'd been there recently."

"Now you mention it," Neera said, "there was an Agent from Tara. Non-Earth Agents are rare, but the Agency cultivates them whenever possible. I don't remember her name, but she had one of those faces you remember. Tall, slender, cold eyes and a beauty mark just above her lip, a little to the left."

Rose sat up straight. "I saw someone like that! The woman in the post office!" When they both looked at her curiously, she explained, "When I got away from Laurel and Hardy back in the city, I found my way to the nearest post office to try and find the Doctor."

He frowned. "Why the post office?"

"They'd mentioned something about knocking you out and putting you on a postal transport, which they said would dump you in the desert as a drunken stowaway. I thought if I could get to an office and explain things, they might be able to find you," she said.

He smiled. "Clever!"

She smiled back. "Anyway, I took a break in the ladies' room and that's when I met that woman. She seemed sympathetic at first, and then I got a sort of weird feeling from her. She kept insisting I let her help. I tried to leave, but I think she drugged me with something. Next thing I knew I woke up in the palace."

Neera stared at the Doctor. "That's it! That's her! Tavreena!"

"The Duke's right-hand you mentioned?" he asked. "The one who killed those two men who kidnapped Rose? The – what did you call her – murderous psychopath?"

"That's her," Neera confirmed, grinning. "You know, I might actually look forward to this."

………………………………………………………………………………………..

By midday Sunis City was a mass of confusion. Riots had broken out all across the city. Barricades had gone up, constructed from whatever vehicles and loose objects the people of the city could find. The Imperial Army had been called out when some of the local police had defected to the side of the revolution.

Standing on a rooftop, safely hidden from view, Rose reflected that it reminded her of the Los Angeles riots mixed with the French Revolution. She just hoped there wasn't a guillotine hidden away anywhere. Or something worse.

Beside her, the Doctor shifted uneasily. They were waiting for Neera's signal that she and some of the revolutionaries had disabled the palace security grid. Once they were inside, the revolutionaries would go after the Duke while Neera, the Doctor, and Rose went after the Time Agent Tavreena.

The Doctor shifted again, and Rose looked over at him. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing," he lied. He wasn't very good at lying. "Just hate waiting." Though, that was true enough.

"Liar," she said. "Something's bothering you. Like you don't trust Neera or you're afraid she'll do something…oh, God, you don't think she'd go after Tavreena on her own, do you?"

"I hope not," he said. "Though, I don't think she will. She'll want us there to stop her."

"Stop her from doing what?"

"Killing Tavreena," he sighed. "Neera's a professional, but…she's gone and done something a bit stupid."

Rose frowned. "What?"

The Doctor looked at her, hesitating. Then he looked away from her, out at the smoke rising from the barricades that the soldiers were setting on fire. "Fallen in love," he said. "She went and fell head over heels for the ringleader of the revolution."

Rose studied his face for a moment. There was something he wasn't telling her. "And?" she prompted.

He swallowed. "And…he dies, Rose."

"But," she protested, "can't she…change it? I mean, she's already changed some things."

He shook his head. "No. I wish she could," he continued before she could say anything. "For that matter, I wish I could, but it can't be changed. His death is the catalyst. He becomes a martyr, and it's the rage his death incites in the populace that allows the revolution to succeed."

"Oh, God," Rose gasped, realization hitting her.

"What?" he looked at her sharply as her grip tightened on his hand.

She looked at him. "That's what they'll do. You said they need this revolution to fail. They'll stop him from dying, Doctor, if that's what makes the revolution work."

He closed his eyes and groaned. "God, you're right. And our intervention means his death. Damn."

"Does Neera know?" Rose asked. "Doctor, do you think she knows?"

He looked at her. "I bet she just figured it out. Let's go."

"Go where?"

"We've got to get to her," he said, standing and pulling Rose to her feet. "We've got to figure some other way out of this."

"Can we do that?" she asked. "Without giving the Agency what they want?"

"We'll find a way," he said grimly.

……………………………………………………………………………….

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

"Shit, shit, and double-shit," Neera sighed.

"Eloquently put," the Doctor said.

Neera grimaced as she waved the last of her small group of revolutionaries inside the maintenance tunnel. "There's more than one Agent at work here," she said.

"I figured that much out," the Doctor nodded his agreement. "There's most likely one or two inside the palace itself trying to find the trillium bomb you lot set earlier. And then…"

"…and then there's the Agent who's job it'll be to ensure Jaren Marks doesn't get executed. Yeah, I figured that out." Neera un-holstered a wicked-looking gun and checked the chamber for ammunition.

"What are you going to do?" Rose asked, concerned.

Neera leveled a stony look at her. "My job," she said simply.

"Neera, we can find another way," the Doctor began, but she cut him off.

"Don't," she said, holding up her hand. "Don't even go down that road if you can't deliver. And you can't."

"Can't I?" The Doctor's tone shifted slightly.

"You can't guarantee anything. Time is fluid, Doctor, you told me that yourself." She checked a few more weapons, sliding knives into hidden holsters, and rearranging small explosives on a Batman-like utility belt.

"Neera…"

"I'm going after Tavreena. You two can take the Agent or Agents inside the palace. You should be able to handle them with no problems, but Tavreena is an expert fighter and deadlier than anything," she paused, giving them a look that made Rose infinitely glad that Neera was on their side, "except me."

The Doctor studied her face for a long moment, then nodded, moving past her into the open tunnel. Neera continued, "The revolutionaries will take care of palace security and any personal Guards of the Duke. They're a small force, though, so you might have to tackle a few on your own. They're cheesecake, don't worry…but you should keep an eye out for any more of those Taran Danger-bots."

Rose held up a ballistics belt that was laden with the Nitro Nine grenades. "We've got it covered." If they made it through this, Rose made a resolution to personally hunt down this girl named Ace and kiss her feet.

"Neera, for what it's worth," the Doctor said softly, putting a hand on the former Time Agent's shoulder, "I'm sorry you have to do this. If there was any other way…if I can find another way, I promise you, I will."

Neera looked at her feet for a moment, then swallowed and looked back at the Doctor and Rose. "Thank you, both. See you in hell," she added, walking towards the exit, stepping over the slumped forms of dispatched palace guards as she did so.

At the exit, she paused, then looked back at the Doctor and said something in a language Rose didn't recognize. She was about to ask the Doctor why it hadn't been translated, then noticed the look on his face. "Where did you hear that?" he asked Neera, a strange, almost strained tone to his voice.

"You told me." And with that Neera disappeared through the tunnel exit.

Something tickled at the edge of her mind and Rose realized why the language hadn't been translated. "Doctor," she said softly, "that was Gallifreyan, wasn't it?"

He looked at her, surprised, and then seemed to remember that she'd been inside his head. "Yes," he said.

"What did she say?"

The Doctor sighed, and slipped his hand into Rose's, squeezing it gently for comfort. "It's a quote from the greatest Time Lord, Rassilon. Well," he corrected, "it's more of a warning. 'Time moves as fluidly as water, and one cannot write upon water.'"

Rose considered it, then said, "But that doesn't mean you can't try."

He smiled.

……………………………………………………………………………………

Jaren Marks hit the dusty ground with a grunt, blinking up as the burly form of a soldier was bearing down on him, wicked-looking knife in hand. Jaren rolled over just in time to avoid the blade, then brought his knee into the soldier's side, where the armor was weak.

The soldier grunted, dazed, and in an instant Jaren was on top of him, slamming the soldier's head into the pavement with enough force to knock him out. The soldier went limp and Jaren struggled to his feet, picking his gun off the dusty street. There was chaos all around him, just like they'd planned, and yet it seemed all plans had gone out the window.

If he could only find Neera…

There was a cry of rage and a form loomed out of the haze and smoke that had covered the city. Another soldier was running at him, his gun trained on a crowd down the street.

The smoke cleared for a brief moment, and Jaren saw what the soldier could not.

"Oh, God," Jaren gasped. "No." They were children. A group of children fleeing a burning building.

His feet raising little clouds of dust and debris as he ran, Jaren pounded furiously down the street, trying to catch the soldier.

………………………………………………………………………………….

"Damn," the Doctor whispered. "We need to get through to the next level, and there's two of those defense robots between us and the entrance. It's locked, too, I need to get at it with the sonic screwdriver."

"Three," Rose corrected. "There's three robots."

"Too right," he sighed. "Okay, here's the plan, you go and – Rose?"

Rose had lunged down the hall, waving her arms and shouting "Oi! You lot! Come and get it!"

The Doctor cursed in a string of languages he hadn't used in at least two hundred years as Rose raced back past him, two of the robots hot on her tail. "Get that door open!" she shouted over her shoulder.

He sped down the hall in the opposite direction, taking the remaining robot by surprise. Jamming the sonic screwdriver down, he clogged the robot's fuel lines and it sputtered and fell over, sparking. A black column of foul-smelling smoke rose from it, and he kicked it aside, concentrating on the door.

………………………………………………………………………………………

Rose could hear the robots gaining on her. Feet nearly slipping on the stone floor, she rounded a corner quickly, sending one of the robots crashing into the wall.

It recovered and started loping after her again.

Terrific.

Up ahead she could see a small room, with the door open. Brilliant!

She picked up some speed, gasping for breath, and dove into the room. The robots dove in after her, but she dropped to the floor and ducked beneath them.

Unpinning the Nitro Nine grenade she was holding, she threw it at the two robots as she rolled through the doorway. Shooting to her feet in a burst of adrenaline, she yanked the door shut behind her and took off running down the hallway. Rose did a mental countdown in her head, hoping she had time to make it to cover.

Four…three…two…

………………………………………………………………………………………..

Neera glanced at her wristcom. She had it keyed into any and all frequencies used by the Time Agency, including a few she wasn't supposed to know about. But then, it had turned out that there were a lot of things concerning the Agency she wasn't supposed to know about.

God, she wished Jack were here.

But he wasn't. She sucked in a breath, and smiled tightly as she picked up on a signal moving south. That had to be Tavreena.

Showtime.

……………………………………………………………………

The Doctor's head jerked up as the sound of an explosion ripped through the air. He nearly dropped the sonic screwdriver. "Rose!" he shouted, shooting to his feet and running down the hall.

"ROSE!" he shouted again as he ran.

He stopped as he caught sight of her, and nearly fainted with relief. She ran to him, and he threw his arms around her, hugging her tightly. "You alright?" he asked.

"Yeah," she squeaked. "Potent stuff, that Nitro Nine."

He pulled back and looked at her, unable to stifle the laugh that bubbled up his throat. She almost looked like a cartoon parody of someone that had been blown up. Bits of her hair stood on end, and her face was covered in black streaks of soot. "Nice work," he laughed, kissing her dirty forehead. "Come on."

He took her hand and they continued on.

…………………………………………………………………………

Jaren took a flying leap forwards and managed to tackle the soldier to the ground. He looked up at the children's schoolteacher and yelled "Go! Get them out of here!"

Beneath him, the soldier struggled, and threw Jaren aside. He winced as he hit a pile of rubble, but managed to get back to his feet. The soldier aimed his gun at Jaren, and he felt at his side for his own gun, but it wasn't there.

It was on the ground. Again. Shit.

Jaren held up his hands. "Just wait a second," he gasped. "Think about this."

The children screamed and the schoolteacher tried to usher them away as quickly as she could.

The soldier clicked the gun safety off.

"Wait," Jaren said, "please, just…"

The sharp pop of a gunshot sounded, and he fell to the ground.

………………………………………………………………………………

Neera cried out as a sharp, fiery pain burst in her shoulder. She fell to the ground in a reflexive move, bringing her gun to bear as she twisted around and fired. The soldier who'd shot her fell to the ground, blood oozing from the hole in his head.

"Damn it," she hissed, looking at her shoulder and removing a field dressing from her belt. It was the edge of her shoulder, thankfully, and it looked like she'd just been grazed. Painful, but nothing that would seriously impede her.

She tied the dressing in a quick knot, then continued on, glancing at her wristcom to make sure she was headed in the right direction.

The little blip on her wristcom screen had stopped just ahead of her. Good, she was almost there.

………………………………………………………………………………….

The smoke cleared and Jaren blinked, dazed. Above him stood a white-blond woman dressed in red leather, holding a gun. He craned his neck over and saw the soldier who had been aiming at him was lying dead on the ground, blood pooling beneath him.

He opened his mouth to say thank-you, but something about the woman stopped him. She had a cold, hard look to her face that sent a chill down his spine.

The children had almost all cleared off, but the schoolteacher had stayed behind. "Oh, thank God," she said to the woman, "I thought he was going to die but you saved him, and he saved us, oh, thank you!"

A look of disgust crossed the woman's face and quicker than Jaren could react, she'd fired the gun and shot the schoolteacher, who crumpled to the ground.

Jaren shot to his feet, but the woman's hand shot out just as fast and gripped him by the neck, throwing him against the nearest available wall. Her gun leveled to his forehead. "I've stopped you from becoming a martyr," she hissed, "but no one said you actually need to live."

"Tavreena!"

If he wasn't being strangled half to death, Jaren might have shouted for joy as he caught sight of Neera.

There was another gunshot, and the woman – Tavreena – spun away from Jaren, just in time to avoid fire from Neera's gun.

Jaren slumped to the ground, gasping as he tried to regain his breath and blink the stars from his eyes. Neera fired ten more shots in rapid succession, emptying her clip. Tavreena somehow managed to dodge all of them, but had to jump behind a building to dodge the last one.

Neera grabbed Jaren by the arm and hauled him to his feet. "RUN!" she shouted, pushing him ahead of her.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

Two soldiers, a maid, one bureaucrat, and four more Robots from Hell later, the Doctor and Rose were finally on the right level of the Palace. Rose leaned against the wall, panting. Thankfully, they'd only had to blow up the robots. The Doctor had managed to stun the soldiers by blowing up a light fixture with the sonic screwdriver, and after the maid and the bureaucrat had seen what happened to the robots, they'd run off shrieking.

Rose was beginning to think she'd never get the smell of ozone out of her nostrils. Constantly blowing things up was not as much fun as it looked in the movies. She was half-blind, half-deaf, and stank. A lot.

"From what I remember," the Doctor said, "the trillium bomb is around this corner, down another hallway, and then to the left."

Rose nodded, only having heard half of what he said through the ringing in her ears. He looked over at her and looked a bit sheepish. He fiddled with the settings on the sonic screwdriver, then held it to her temple. She looked at him in confusion, then gasped as her hearing and vision cleared instantly.

She blinked and shook her head quickly. "What was that?" she asked.

He lowered the sonic screwdriver and grinned impishly. "I programmed in a few human medical settings after that incident with you and the gigantic splinter in your bum."

"Alright," she held up a hand. "I don't want to talk about that. Lead on."

They moved cautiously down the hallway, then suddenly the Doctor grabbed Rose and pulled her behind a pillar. She frowned at him, but he was looking down the hall. Carefully edging her face around, she saw a tall, thin woman with long black hair, dressed in a desert rob walking towards them, though she didn't seem to see them.

Rose's jaw dropped as she got a better look at the woman's face. She exchanged looks with the Doctor, who squeezed her arm in warning.

A second later, he had to clamp his hand over her mouth as they both heard a very familiar voice yell, "Neera! Wait up for Christ's sake. You'd think this was a race."

The woman rolled her eyes. "Move it, then!"

A man rounded the corner, and Rose felt like she was going to faint.

It was Jack.

……………………………………………………………………………………

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

Jack Harkness strode into view, looking as cocky and jaunty as ever in his desert attire, a very large weapon holstered in a belt at his waist. Rose's eyes widened, and the Doctor pressed his hand a little more firmly to her mouth.

The long-haired Neera stopped in the intersection of the hall, looking to her left and right. "I don't like this, Jack," she said.

Jack's attitude sobered as he strode up beside her. "Yeah," he agreed, "there's something strange going on here." His sharp blue eyes roved around the hall, and the Doctor edged them both back into the shadows behind the pillar. "I mean," he continued, "them pulling us from our assignment like this and ordering us here. This is a cakewalk; it should be handled by some rookie team, not us."

"Why us, Jack? The top requested us specifically."

He shrugged. "I don't know, but I don't like it either. Neera, I told you…something is going on."

Neera rolled her eyes. "Not another conspiracy theory."

Jack grabbed her arm, and turned her to face him. "How much do you trust me, Neera Vasuda?"

"Jack, we don't have time to –"

"How much?" he insisted.

She sighed. "I trust you with my life and more. You know that."

He cupped Neera's face the same way he'd done to Rose before. Rose smiled in spite of herself, and the Doctor's hand fell away from her face, but he held a warning finger to his lips. Rose nodded.

"Neera," Jack was saying, "as much as you trust me, you have to listen to me now. There is something dark going on here. I don't know what it is, but this…assignment, whatever it is…this is the last straw. We need to find out who's behind this."

Neera frowned. "What do you mean?"

He was silent for a moment, then looked at her. "Neera…I know I can't ask you to do this. You're one of the best people I've ever worked with, and you've got a brilliant career. But there is a force at work inside the Agency that goes beyond anything we've ever faced. I don't know what it is, but I know it's evil."

"Jack…"

"Something or someone is changing human events, shaping them into…I don't know. But it has to stop, Neera."

Her mouth tightened and she raised an eyebrow. "And what? You're going to stop it? All on your own?"

"Yeah," he said. "I guess so."

She stared at him for a moment, then quickly smacked him on the side of his head.

"Ow, Neera, what the hell?"

"Idiot! Like I'd let you go and do something that stupid without me," she snorted.

He grinned and grabbed her waist, pulling her close. "I knew you'd cave," he said, a seductive note to his voice.

She gave him a disgusted look and pushed him away. "Jack, for God's sake…there's a time and a place."

Jack rolled his eyes, but smirked playfully. "Sorry, Miss Frigid Panties."

"Apology accepted, Mr. Is That My Sonic Blaster Or Am I Just Happy To See You," she replied in the same tone. "Right, let's go, then."

"You? Abandoning your post? My God, I have corrupted you, haven't I?" he grinned again. "Maybe there's hope for you yet."

"Stuff it, Casanova," Neera said to him, fiddling with something on her wristcom. "I've already disabled the trillium bomb. They were right about one thing…it's definitely fifty-first century technology."

Jack frowned. "And you have no inclination to find out who planted that bomb?"

"Not really, no. It's anachronistic tech, and it's been dealt with. End of orders."

"You really don't want to know?"

"No."

"Why not?" he sniffed.

She leveled a look at him. "Because I'm well-adjusted. Though, apparently not well-adjusted enough to knock sense into your head. So come on, let's go investigate your conspiracy theory."

He gave her an appraising look. "You're really going to do this with me?"

She smiled. "Yeah, I am. Guess you have corrupted me. Your transmat link up?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Right," Neera replied. "Job done. Bomb dismantled, no chance of reassembly. Let's get out of here."

There was a bright flash of light and the two of them disappeared.

After a long moment, the Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver and checked a reading. Then he slumped against the wall and slid to the floor. Rose did the same.

They looked at each other.

"That," the Doctor breathed, "was absurdly close."

……………………………………………………………………………..

"Alley!" Neera gasped. "Go left! Left!"

Jaren's feet slid across the bloodstained cobblestones. There had been a fight here earlier, and smoke was still rising from burnt out buildings. Good place to hide.

"Down!" Neera snapped, grabbing the back of his shirt and throwing him behind what was left of a barricade.

They both fell to their knees, Neera cautiously peering around the side of an overturned vehicle. She sighed in relief. "Lost her for a bit, I think."

"Who the hell is she?" Jaren gasped.

"A very bad person."

He glared at her. "No shit," he hissed. "Is she the reason you're here? You're here to stop her from doing whatever she's supposed to be doing?"

"Yeah," Neera said, not quite meeting his gaze.

Jaren knew she was lying, but also knew from experience that to question her further would only lead to a potentially painful set of injuries for him. "I suppose," he smiled, "I should say thanks."

Her lip twitched. "Yeah, might be a good idea."

"Well, y'know…thanks."

"You're welcome. Take this," she said, pressing an extra gun into his hands as he leaned forward to kiss her. "And go."

He blinked. "What?"

She looked at him, a hard expression on her face he had never seen before. "Take the weapon, Jaren. Go and fight this revolution. You started it, now go and finish it."

"What about you?" he frowned. "Neera…"

"I've got a job to do," she said firmly. "Go. I'll watch your back as far as that intersection over there, but after that you're on your own."

"But…"

"And for God's sake, Jaren," Neera sighed, "be careful. Please. Promise me you'll be careful."

Quick as a flash, she grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into a fierce kiss. As she quickly pulled away again, he caught a glimpse of something in her eyes. She was worried about him, more worried than she'd ever admit to, he knew.

Jaren pressed a finger to her cheek and gave her a smile. She didn't smile back, but her face softened a bit. "Hey," he said, trying to be reassuring, "it's me. I know what I'm doing."

She swallowed, and that hard look was back in place. "Yeah."

He took a quick look around the still-empty street, then stood and started to walk away. After a few feet, he heard Neera call his name. "Jaren?"

He turned. "Yeah?"

"Good luck."

Jaren smiled at her. "You, too. See you in hell, eh?"

He turned his back again and started off at a brisk pace; so brisk he didn't notice the sound of her crying.

……………………………………………………………………………….

"You okay, Rose?"

The Doctor looked over at her. She still looked a bit shaken, but she nodded and said "Yeah, I'm fine."

He frowned. "You sure?"

She closed her eyes for a second, then reopened them. "Yeah, I'm sure. It's just weird, that's all. I mean…what they were talking about. That was a past Jack and Neera, wasn't it? That was them before we met either of them?"

"Yes, it was," he said, standing and offering her a hand up. "Good thing they left. If Neera had run into her former self at all, it would've caused a massive paradox at an already weak point in time."

"Worse than the one I caused?" she asked, brushing herself off.

"Ten times worse," he replied and she looked at him, blinking.

"Hang on," she said. "If the Time Agency sent them here, but it's the Agency itself that's trying to change time…I mean, wouldn't they know Neera's already here?"

"That's a very good point," he said, grinning at her proudly. "Well done."

Rose retied her ponytail, blushing a bit. "Thanks," she mumbled.

"So," he mused, "either the Agency doesn't know specifically that it's Neera behind this, which I honestly find hard to believe. It'd be the logical guess, since she was Jack's partner, after all."

"What's the other option?"

"The other option," he replied, "is that you're right, and the Agency did know it was Neera. And, for the record, I think you're right. However, if that's the case…then that could mean a couple different things. Either whoever sent the other Jack and Neera here wasn't privy to the information that Neera was already here or," he sighed, "they knew and they did it on purpose."

Rose frowned at him in confusion. "But," she said, "why would anyone want to cause a paradox intentionally? I mean, I caused one by accident and that's definitely not something I'd want to repeat."

He winced, remembering a feeling of gnashing teeth and hot saliva. "Yeah, me either. Anyway," he started again, before she could apologize for 1987 yet again, "what it means is that either someone believes they can control the paradox – in which case, they're incredibly stupid – or it's not really the Agency behind this at all."

"You mean someone might be using the Time Agency as a front? Like Satellite Five?"

"Exactly. Question is: Who?" He took out the sonic screwdriver. "Let's go and have a look at that dismantled bomb."

……………………………………………………………………….

Something whizzed through the air just past her ear, and Neera dropped to the ground. It'd been like this for nearly fifteen minutes, like some twisted game of cat and mouse. Tavreena was the sort of hunter that liked to toy with her prey, but that was fine by Neera. The more she played, the less she could intervene. Neera trusted the Doctor and Rose to take care of any other Agents.

She found herself wondering about Rose and the Doctor; wondering whether she'd ever get to find out their story. Why was an ordinary human girl traveling with a Time Lord like the Doctor? Why had the Doctor allowed himself to fall so obviously head over heels for a human he'd outlive by centuries?

It was an interesting puzzle, and if there was one thing in life Neera couldn't resist, it was a puzzle.

Maybe that's why she'd let Jack talk her into all of his conspiracy nonsense.

Though, it hadn't turned out to be nonsense, after all, had it?

As she turned down another back alley and crouched in a doorframe, reloading her weapon, she remembered the time she'd first agreed to help Jack discover who or what was manipulating the Agency. She hadn't believed him at the time. She could remember arguing with him, standing in some deserted corridor somewhere on some stupid mission that the top brass had…

…oh, shit.

She gasped, and nearly dropped her weapon. It had been here! It had been here in Sunis City! She remembered…she'd only barely paid attention to the mission details, she'd been so irritated by the assignment. Anachronistic tech recovery or dismantling. Rookie stuff.

Oh, hell, the bomb! The bloody stupid trillium bomb that she had set herself.

There had to still be time to reset it. She forced herself to remember exactly how she'd taken it apart, piece by piece. There was time. She could do it if she got back to the palace now.

She sped out of the doorframe and back down the alley, but before she reached the end, she felt a sharp pain like a line of fire across her back and fell face forward.

A knife blade was thrust down inches from her nose as the weight of a knee pressed agonizingly into her spine. "I'm tired of this game," Tavreena's hot breath hissed in her ear. "It ends."

……………………………………………………………………………………

Two seconds with the sonic screwdriver and the Doctor managed to get the light in the maintenance cupboard working.

"Cozy," Rose commented dryly, taking in all the remnants of the trillium bomb.

The Doctor cursed softly and Rose looked at him questioningly. "She took the trillium core."

"Can you fix it without it?"

"Rose, it's a trillium bomb. It runs on trillium. It'd be like a hydrogen nuclear bomb without the hydrogen. It wouldn't work properly."

"But it'd still be a bomb," she pointed out.

He opened his mouth to argue, then stopped. "Rose Tyler, have I told you that you're a genius yet today?"

"No," she replied, "but I think you should do that every day, thanks. So you can fix it?"

He grinned that familiar maniacal grin. "Oh, yes! Pass me those grenades."

……………………………………………………………………………………….

Neera pushed her palms against the pavement and threw her body weight quickly upwards, dislodging Tavreena and throwing her off balance for a fraction of a second.

But that fraction was all Neera needed.

She landed a quick chop to Tavreena's neck, bruising her windpipe but unfortunately not crushing it, then followed through with a roundhouse kick that lifted the other woman off her feet. Neera scooped up the knife from the street as Tavreena stumbled back and pulled out a hidden knife from her boot.

Neera held up the knife in a fighting stance. "Come on, then," she growled.

With a cry of fury, Tavreena lunged towards her.

…………………………………………………………………………..

"Should I change my name to the Nurse?" Rose asked idly, as she passed the Doctor another piece of equipment and tucked his discarded trench coat to the side.

He snorted by way of reply, then looked over his shoulder and waggled his eyebrows. "No," he snickered, "but there might be a little white uniform lying around the TARDIS wardrobe somewhere. We could have a look for it later, if you like."

Rose resisted the temptation to laugh. "And what, exactly, were you up to when you acquired this said costume?" she asked loftily.

His lip twitched. "A gentleman never kisses and tells."

"Doctor!" she smacked his arm.

"Rose!" he yelped. "Bomb!" he pointed to the apparatus in front of him. "You really don't want to smack a person when they're in the middle of building a large explosive device, alright?"

"Your fault," she grumbled. "Though, having seen the TARDIS wardrobe room, it's probably just someone's discarded fancy dress costume or something. I mean, seriously, what'd you do, buy wholesale from some store?"

He cleared his throat uncomfortably and switched off the sonic screwdriver. "Oh, look at that, the bomb's finished."

A grin spread across her face. "You did, didn't you?"

"Might have done, yeah," he said quickly. "Anyway, we're done here." He stood, stretching. He gave her a hand up. "Now, to set the timer…"

"Doctor," Rose began, then paused.

He looked at her. "Yes?"

"It's just…there's people in here." She bit her lip. "I mean, I know revolutions are wars and in every war there are casualties and all that lot, but…I don't know. It just seems wrong, us setting off this bomb like this. There are bound to be innocent people up here."

"The bomb has to go off, Rose. It's part of a series of events that leads to the city populace storming the palace. The bomb takes out the upper levels and destroys the military communications center, which leaves the Imperial Army in chaos, allowing the revolutionaries to get the upper hand."

"Then it just has to take out the communications center? Couldn't we have done that?" She knew she was pleading, but it still just felt…wrong.

He shook his head. "Too many guards. I'm alright in a scrape, but neither of us are trained fighters like Neera. Besides, if we took out the communications center ourselves, it would go unnoticed by the city. They need to see that bomb go off."

"Isn't there any other way? Some way, maybe, we could get the soldiers to…hang on," she said, an idea starting to form.

He blinked and looked at her, and she knew the same idea had hit him, too.

They both grinned at each other and said in unison, "Psychic paper."

………………………………………………………………………….

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

Neera Vasuda kicked open the roof door, still brandishing her knife in front of her. She should have known a simple knife fight wouldn't turn out so simple against an opponent like Tavreena. They'd fought in the street for a good twenty minutes, then had again turned to a cat-and-mouse hunt.

Only this time, Neera was the cat, and she wasn't toying around.

There was a familiar whizzing sound, and Neera ducked just as a bullet-hole was blown in the roof door. Great. Tavreena had found a gun and she still only had a knife.

Well done, Neera.

……………………………………………………………………………….

"Rose," the Doctor said, bending over the smoking remnants of the robot they'd just dispatched with one of the remaining Nitro Nine grenades, "look at this."

She bent to look over his shoulder, waving the smoke away from her face. "What is it?"

He held up an extracted computer chip and analyzed it with the sonic screwdriver. "Remote control," he said. "It's a signal relay. No, wait…it's a power relay. The power source for these robots must be a generator that transmits energy through frequency. Interesting technology, and definitely not indigenous to this era," he paused, giving her a significant look, "or the fifty-first century, for that matter."

"So it's not from the Time Agency, then?" When he nodded, she continued, "Do you think it could be a clue as to who's really behind this?"

"Most definitely. Which is why you're going to take plenty of pictures of it with your mobile before you disable it." He grinned at her and pressed the sonic screwdriver into her hand. "Just point and click. It should do the trick."

"How are you going to take the communications center on your own, then?" Rose asked, frowning.

"Well, I imagine it'll go somewhere along the lines of: find soldier, knock soldier unconscious, take soldier's uniform, slip inside communications center, convince them I'm someone important with the psychic paper, then transmit an order for all available personnel in the palace to evacuate the premises."

She raised an eyebrow. "And that'll work, will it?"

"Should do, yeah," he grinned. "Besides, your face is probably plastered all over their security net after the last time you were here."

She nodded. "Yeah, you're probably right."

"The generator will be at the highest point for maximum transmitting, so just head for the roof. Keep your head down, and stick to the maintenance stairways and lifts. Rose, be careful," he added softly, touching her face briefly with his hand.

"You, too, Doctor," she replied, kissing him briefly before heading down the hall.

………………………………………………………………………………….

Neera cursed as her knee gave way beneath her as she landed. She was sporting injuries all over from the fight, but her damn knee was an old rugby injury. Perfect time for it to act up. Really, could anything else go wrong right now?

Stupid question.

The piece of roofing she'd landed on started to give way. Apparently, it wasn't really a roof. Sliding off it, she managed to grab hold of a decorative window ledge as the large piece of metal awning fell six stories down and crashed onto the street below.

Oh, good. Because that wouldn't draw anyone's attention at all.

Wearily, she hauled herself up onto the ledge and broke through the glass window with her elbow. Stepping through into a darkened room, she slid her knife back out of its sheath.

Dark. It was too dark. She opened a pouch on her belt and pulled out a small pencil torch. The room was empty save for some old furniture. Looked like an old office building of some sort. Locating the stairway, she started cautiously down to the ground floor.

On the third floor landing, she paused and sniffed the air. It smelled strange and yet familiar, like…

…like gas.

Shit.

Neera kicked open the door and raced to the nearest room, managing to through herself through an open window just as the sound of an explosion ripped through the air. She hit the ground and covered her head, wincing as shattered glass and debris fell all around her.

Carefully, she rolled onto her back and looked at the now burnt-out building. "Okay," she groaned, struggling to her feet, "that was a bit flash."

……………………………………………………………………………….

As it turned out, it wasn't a soldier the Doctor was impersonating, but a technician. Even better. They wore big white coats, so he didn't even have to take off his suit, which made him happy. He really liked this suit.

He flashed the psychic paper at the guard, who let him in saying, "They're having trouble with the secondary power feed."

Yeah, he knew. He'd cut the line.

"Right," he nodded, walking inside the communications center.

Someone, a general by the markings on his coat, took one look at him and waved him towards the back of the large room, where there was an empty terminal. "Hurry up," the general said irritably, "haven't got time."

"I know, sir," the Doctor replied, saluting and managing to make it look at least half-serious.

He removed the panel on the terminal and crouched down among the wires. He'd given Rose the sonic screwdriver, so this would take a bit longer than it normally would for him. Still…he was brilliant, after all. Shouldn't take that long.

He didn't like leaving Rose on her own.

……………………………………………………………………………….

Rose flattened herself against the wall, hidden by a set of pipes as two figures hurried past, jabbering at each other too quickly for Rose to catch what they were saying. She watched them until they were out of her sight, then started back up the stairwell again. They hadn't been soldiers or guards; she'd been right, there were still servants (probably slaves) up on these levels. Innocents who would've been killed by the blast.

Feeling a bit more determined, she reached the top of the stairs and cautiously pushed open the door. The floor looked empty, but she wasn't going to take any chances. She took one of the last Nitro Nine grenades – only two left after this one – and held it in her hand, her thumb poised over the pin.

Somewhere along the stairwell, she'd made the firm decision that she much preferred running away from danger rather than running towards it. Rose made a mental note to never suggest getting involved in a revolution ever again.

She tried valiantly to not feel as desperate and alone as she had when she'd been imprisoned in the palace before without the Doctor. The Doctor was here now, she reminded herself, just ten or so floors below her, and he was trusting her to do this. She wasn't a child that needed minding; she was a partner, a companion.

Partner. Maybe she should get them matching cowboy hats. He'd get a kick out of that.

The hallways up here were more high-tech and less opulently furnished than those below. She hadn't found another stairway yet, so she was probably on the top floor. There had to be a way up to the roof somewhere, unless the generator was on this floor.

A doorway slid open as she approached, like something out of Star Trek. Figured. She wished she'd paid more attention to the show when Mickey had made her watch it.

Blimey, Mickey. She'd forgotten about him. And now she and the Doctor really were…oh, that wasn't going to be a fun conversation. She'd be lucky if Mickey ever spoke to her again.

Her thoughts were interrupted as she turned a corner and gasped in horror at what she saw.

………………………………………………………………………………..

A sword! Bigger than a knife, but not as good as a gun. Unfortunately, it was all the dead soldier had on him. Neera tested the sword, slashing it quickly across the dead soldier's uniform. From the clean slit in the cloth, she judged it to be exceedingly sharp.

Not just decorative, then. Good.

Judging from the sound level, there was a riot going on not too far away. There were bursts of gunfire and noises she associated with energy weapons, so it must be the Imperial Army and the revolutionaries. She had to make sure to steer Tavreena away from that area, though she knew Tavreena would try to draw her into it, to distract her.

This was seriously beginning to get irritating.

Nervously, she glanced back towards the sprawling palace complex. She hadn't heard from the Doctor or Rose, so she hoped that meant they were still in the palace. Maybe they'd been able to do something about the bomb. She didn't remember having met them before, which meant that they'd either avoided the version of her and Jack inside, or they had completely missed them.

Neera cursed. She hated this uncertainty. She hated this whole damn situation. And she couldn't risk contacting Rose's phone in case she gave away their position.

Nine hundred years old and the only thing the Doctor carted around with him was a goddamn sonic screwdriver.

What she wanted to was get back up to the palace and fix the bomb herself, but that wasn't an option until she dealt with Tavreena. That woman was too dangerous to leave running loose about Sunis City.

Especially not now, when they were this close.

This had to end.

……………………………………………………………………………………..

Bodies. The corridor was full of dead bodies.

Rose covered her mouth with her hand, wincing at the cloyingly sweet and metallic smell of blood. She squeezed her eyes shut long enough to settle her stomach, then opened them again. She recognized the clothes the dead people were wearing.

The revolutionaries. They were the group of revolutionaries Neera had sent inside the palace to capture the Duke.

There must still be one of those robots loose. Or something worse, which Rose really didn't want to think about.

She forced herself to walk past and over the bodies, all the time looking for a door or stairway that would lead to the roof. She couldn't help these people now, they were already dead.

The Doctor trusted her to disable that generator and cut the robots' power source out. If this was the extent of the damage they could do, and if those things were now out in the city… Rose picked up her pace a bit.

As she reached the end of the hall, she spotted a door. It looked heavy, like a door that might lead to the outside. Carefully easing it open a crack, she almost cried in relief when the warm sunlight hit her face. She'd found it!

She took one last look at the carnage in the hall, and was suddenly thankful she had both the sonic screwdriver and the remaining Nitro Nine grenades.

……………………………………………………………………………….

The Doctor straightened, having finished his bit of jiggery-pokery. It hadn't been easy finding the Duke's personal code to broadcast from, but in the end his brilliance had prevailed. He'd have to remember to boast to Rose later.

Though she'd probably just smile, pat him on the head, and ask if he wanted tea.

Or they'd have sex. Maybe they'd have tea and then sex. Yes, that sounded nice. Good way to unwind after a revolution.

And, y'know, if he just happened to accidentally run across that nurse's uniform while cleaning the TARDIS wardrobe room, well, then…what a happy coincidence that would be, eh?

It was strange, he reflected as he stood and replaced the metal front of the terminal. He didn't regret sleeping with Rose in the slightest. He'd always thought he would, but he didn't. It hadn't changed the way he felt about her; he'd already loved her as much as he could. Sex was just another way of expressing it to her, he realized.

Somewhere along the way, he'd figured out that whether or not they deepened their relationship, it would still hurt him terribly when she died. And she would die. She was human, he couldn't just wish it away.

Oh, she might live longer than most humans. She might have gained a hundred years or so from the Time Vortex, but it made no difference. He would still outlive her.

He thought of Neera and her ill-fated love for the revolutionary, Jaren Marks. How he wished he could find a way to save him. But he knew it probably wouldn't happen. More to the point, Neera knew. She fully believed Jaren would die.

And she didn't let that stop her from loving him while she could.

For a nine hundred year old Time Lord, the Doctor realized he could be pretty thick at times. How did that old poem go? _Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…_

Well, he thought, looking around the communications center, it was time to get out of here and go gather up his own rosebud.

She'd kill him if he ever called her that.

Working hard to suppress his grin, he pressed a small discreet button on the terminal. A couple seconds later and a beeping sound issued from a terminal across the room. The Doctor waited while a soldier relayed the information to the head general, who then growled something under his breath and ordered the evacuation of the palace.

Excellent. Off to get Rose and get her the hell away from this planet.

……………………………………………………………………….

Rose slipped her mobile back into her pocket. She'd taken as many pictures as her phone could hold, from as many different angles as she could get. That would have to do. She should stop and get one of those super-thin digital cameras next time they were on Earth. They would work better for this sort of thing.

Not, she reflected, that she wanted to be doing this sort of thing again any time soon. But, life with the Doctor was life with the Doctor, after all.

Switching on the sonic screwdriver, she pointed it at the generator. After a moment, the large bit of machinery sort of gurgled and a noxious black smoke issued out from it. There was a sizzle, a couple pops and sparks, and then the whole thing went quite.

Smiling, Rose switched off the sonic screwdriver and pocketed it as well. That hadn't been so hard. Now she just had to find the Doctor and get out of here.

As she turned to head back to the entrance, something hard struck her on the side of the head, and she fell to the ground in a blur of pain.

………………………………………………………………………………..

Neera ducked as another bullet hole erupted in the wall beside her. She moved quickly to the right and slid into the shadows of an alleyway. Mentally, she extrapolated Tavreena's position from the direction of the bullet. Right, now she had a rough idea where Tavreena was. Good.

Moving quickly, she doubled back on her original position and then fled by a different route. As she navigated the city streets with ease, she caught sight of that garish red leather getup a few streets in front of her. Silently, she picked up a small stone from the ground and hurled it into the upcoming intersection, making sure she bounced it off a few objects so it would be impossible to trace back to her.

The figure in red leather whipped around at the sound.

Yup, definitely Tavreena.

Neera drudged up the memory of every fight she had ever been in; every scrap of martial arts and weapons training she'd ever had, in or out of the Academy. The ball was in her court now, and she was going to end it, one way or another.

She hefted the stolen sword in one hand and removed a small explosive pellet from her belt. She tossed the pellet into an empty police vehicle, using the resulting explosion for cover as she vaulted into the street.

Tavreena barely had time to react as Neera came hurdling down at her through the thick black smoke. The sword blade flashed once and while she didn't manage to take off Tavreena's hand, the gun went flying into the burning remains of the vehicle.

Tavreena recovered quickly and ducked the next sword thrust, striking outwards and catching Neera in the abdomen with her fist. As Neera doubled over and slashed downwards with the sword, Tavreena rolled beneath her, knocking her off her feet.

Neera managed to scramble back upright, sword in hand, just as Tavreena brought a still-flaming bit of wreckage down on her head.

She managed to block it with her upper arm and shoulder, but the burning metal seared her clothing and skin. Neera pushed past the pain and shoved the rubble aside, covering her moment of weakness by slashing the sword out in a wider arc. There was a yelp and a flash of blood as Neera caught Tavreena's thigh, and the other woman staggered back, spitting curses as she held a hand to the wound.

Neera panted for breath and watched her warily. The cut wasn't deep, but it would slow down Tavreena's movement.

"Why are you doing this?" Neera hissed at her. "Why? Who's behind this?"

Tavreena blinked at her in amazement and let out a harsh laugh. "This isn't fiction, Agent Vasuda," she snorted, "I'm not going to reveal my supposed master plan at the last second because I'm so certain you'll die."

Neera repositioned the sword blade. "So you're certain I'm going to die?"

A look passed over her face. "Oh, yes."

Too late, Neera spun around, only to be blinded by a flash of gunpowder as a bullet went ripping through her abdomen in a river of fire. She fell backwards, involuntarily dropping the sword as she fell. Dimly, she was aware of it clattering to the pavement beside her.

Time seemed to slow. Neera was aware at first only of the horrible pain in her stomach, and the hot wetness that was spreading across her as blood leaked out of the wound. Her hand seemed to move so slowly, trying to press against the wound, trying to stop the bleeding as thought that alone would save her life.

There was another gunshot but instead of hitting her, the soldier who'd shot her fell down, lifeless.

A voice yelled her name, and she gasped as she turned her head and caught sight of Jaren running towards her. No, she wanted to cry out, but she couldn't find her voice; couldn't taste anything but blood in her mouth.

Jaren leapt on Tavreena, and they fought. Neera wasn't sure how long it lasted, everything seemed to move so painfully slow. A sharp burst of pain spread through her stomach, and her bits of medical training told her what was happening to her body. It was bad. As the pain spread, she cried out involuntarily.

It must have distracted Jaren. It must've been her fault. A second later he was on the ground beside her, and she was staring into his lifeless eyes.

"No…" she whispered.

Somehow she managed to crawl to him, though the pain. She reached out to touch his face, leaving a trail of her blood on his cheek. "I'm sorry," she whispered, laying her head down on his chest, where there was no familiar heartbeat. No hand to work its way through her hair, no deep laugh that reverberated through his whole body. No warmth.

A hand touched her shoulder and it was like a bubble bursting. There was a cacophony of noises around her. Belatedly, she realized that the explosion must've drawn a crowd. There was screaming, and as Neera opened her eyes, she saw Tavreena being dragged out of the city intersection by an angry mob.

A man was standing on another overturned vehicle shouting that this had to be the end of it. They had to end the repression and violence. They couldn't let people die like this in vain.

The man who had touched her shoulder had soft, sympathetic eyes. "Let me help you," he was saying, "I've had medical training, I can help you. Your wound isn't as bad as it seems, just hold on, okay?"

It took her a moment to comprehend, and then she nodded weakly. "It's alright," the man said, opening some sort of bag and getting to work. "It'll be alright now. Everyone saw what happened. Everyone saw him try to save your life. He won't die in vain. They're all rising up now. Everyone's angry. They can't be stopped, not now. Everything's going to change, I think."

Hot tears coursed down Neera's cheeks as she realized they'd done it. The revolution would succeed. Jaren had died a martyr's death and humanity was saved for the moment.

And it was all her fault.

…………………………………………………………………………………….

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

Rose instinctively rolled to the side, clutching her head, and narrowly avoiding the heavy pipe as it struck into the roof. Gasping, she quickly got to her feet and spun around, whipping out one of the Nitro Nine grenades.

Her stomach clenched as she recognized her attacker. It was the Duke. The real Duke, she thought. He was bleeding a bit from a cut on his cheek. Robots didn't bleed.

But she was. She could feel it dripping down the side of her head, and down her cheek.

Brandishing the grenade, she yelled with more force than she felt, "Back off!"

She backed slowly towards the roof entrance, but he matched her step for step. There was a crazed look in his eye. "It's all your fault," he panted, "you're cursed. If I kill you, it'll stop."

"It won't ever stop," Rose yelled. "It won't ever end because you can't treat people like this, like you own them! The more you try to control them, the more they'll rise up and they won't ever stop until they're free from you! Ever!"

But it didn't look like heard her. He kept advancing on her and suddenly he jumped at her, brandishing the pipe.

She screamed and threw the grenade, leaping backwards to avoid the pipe. She turned and bolted for the door, and managed to make it through before the explosion, but a weight crashed into her and knocked her to the ground.

Struggling, she threw the Duke off her and scrambled to her feet. He let out a cry of mad rage and leaped at her again, his hands closing around her throat.

She stumbled backwards against the wall so hard it knocked the breath from her. The Duke's fingers tightened like an iron vice and she couldn't get breath. Panicking, her instincts took over and she clawed at his face, her knee coming up to hit him hard in the groin.

The combination of her kicking and scratching stunned him momentarily and loosened his fingers. From somewhere inside her head she heard Jack's voice telling her what to do, and she brought her fists down hard on his elbow joints.

His grip fell away and Rose dived away from him, falling down onto her hands and knees. She saw the length of pipe he'd dropped and grabbed onto it, swinging it upwards as he moved to attack her again.

It hit him in the side, and she heard a sickening crunch of bone. But her survival instincts had taken over, driving the fear out of her. She remembered Amara's dead body in her arms, remembered the young stupid guard who'd been given orders to kill without question. She remembered the tales Amara told her of women kidnapped out of the streets, no one bothering to look for them because they weren't human; no one caring that those poor women were doomed to a life of misery, slavery, and rape.

Wildly, she swung the pipe again, catching the Duke's legs this time, and knocking him onto his back.

Rose stood over him. She could end it. She could bring the pipe down on his head. This floor would be caught in the explosion. No one would ever know she'd killed him. History would write him off as dead in the explosion.

She wanted to, so badly. She wanted to end it. She had to end it.

Unbidden, a memory flashed in her mind. The Doctor, standing there, pointing a gun at Van Statten's Dalek, telling her to get out of the way. "I've got to end it, Rose," he'd said. She'd looked at him like he was a monster, and asked him what the hell he was changing into.

And now…what was she, Rose Tyler, changing into?

Rose dropped the pipe and staggered backwards, a sob clawing its way up her throat. What had she almost done?

………………………………………………………………………………

"Rose? Rose!" the Doctor yelled, running through the hallway choked with dead revolutionaries. There were two more bodies at the end of the hall, near the explosion-damaged door.

But they were still alive, he realized with relief. One was lying on his back, groaning in pain. The Doctor spared him the briefest of glances, registering who he was and the fact that he really didn't care if the Duke was in pain, then turned his attention to the other form.

Rose was crouched with her back to the wall, head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. He knelt in front of her and gingerly took her hands in his. "Rose?" he said softly, then inhaled sharply as he saw blood on the side of her head. "Rose, are you alright? What happened?"

"Doctor," she sobbed, reaching for him.

He pulled her tightly against him. "It's alright, Rose, I'm here. I should never have left you, I'm so sorry," he whispered against her hair. "Oh, Rose."

After a moment, she stopped crying enough to speak. "It's not that," she said, her breath still hitching. "It's…I…oh, God," she moaned.

He tilted her face up. "What is it, Rose? What's wrong?"

"He attacked me," she managed, waving towards the roof. "I…I fought back, but I almost killed him."

"It's self defense, Rose, it's not your fault."

She shook her head, then winced in pain from her wound. He caught sight of the angry red finger marks on her neck, and felt a sudden desire to kill the Duke himself rather than wait for the revolution to do it for him. Her next words stopped him cold, though. "No. I didn't stop at defense," she said. "I was so angry, I wanted to kill him. I almost killed him, Doctor, because I wanted to."

He knew how she felt, and he ached for her. Holding her gaze in his own, he said firmly, "But you didn't, did you, Rose? You didn't kill him."

"No."

"That's right," he said. "You had the choice. You had his life in your hands, and you chose not to take it. And that," he said, turning her face back to his when she tried to look away, "that, Rose, is what makes you different from people like him. You chose not to kill."

She wrapped her arms around him, and he hugged her again. "Come on," he said, pulling her to her feet. "Let's get out of here."

"What about him?" she gestured weakly to the prone figure of the Duke.

"Leave him to us," said a voice, and they turned to see a group of women standing in the hall. A few of them were gently moving aside the dead bodies of the revolutionaries, one woman saying some sort of prayer over them.

As the explosion-damaged lights flickered on again, the Doctor saw that the women were mostly alien, only one or two looking vaguely human. Suddenly, he knew who they were.

The lost women Neera had told him about. The kidnapped alien women the Duke had taken for his harem.

Beside him, Rose opened her mouth to say something, but the Doctor squeezed her hand gently, and she turned to look at him. "You made your choice, Rose," he said gently, brushing her cheek with his hand, "now let them make theirs."

She swallowed, then looked at him again. "Okay," she said. "Let's go."

He let Rose walk ahead of him, and he caught the arm of the woman who'd spoken as he passed her. "There's a bomb on level forty-seven," he told her. "It's set to go off in twenty minutes. It'll take out all the levels above it, including this one."

"I understand," she said.

"You have a future," he told her. "I know you've been through so much that it might not seem that way, but all of you have a future now. Don't let it be tainted," he finished softly.

With that, he turned away from the woman and joined Rose at the end of the hall, taking her hand in his and leading her out of the palace.

………………………………………………………………………………….

Stiff and sore, Neera Vasuda opened her eyes, blinking rapidly to clear them. She was in a room of some sort, architecture she half-recognized surrounding a load of medical equipment, only some of which was familiar to her.

Struggling, she tried to sit up, then gasped and gave up the effort.

"Easy," said a familiar female voice, and Neera blinked as Rose Tyler's face came into her field of vision. "You're still hurt. The Doctor's got you on some sort of tissue regeneration thing," she said, "but it'll take some time."

She noticed a bandage on the side of Rose's head. "You alright?"

Rose blinked, then felt her head. "What? Oh, yeah. I can probably take this off now, I think."

She tugged what Neera had mistaken for a bandage from her head, and pointed to the new, fresh pink skin beneath. "See?" Rose said. "I had a head wound, and this fixed it up. Tissue regeneration thing."

Neera raised an eyebrow. "Is that it's proper name?" she asked, her voice hoarse.

Rose handed her a glass of water and tucked a few pillows behind her head so she could drink easier. "It is now," she grinned.

Feeling rejuvenated by the water, she looked around again. "Am I in the TARDIS?" she asked, finally recognizing the style of architecture.

"Infirmary, yeah," Rose said.

Neera blinked. "How big is this ship?"

"Very," said the Doctor as he strode in, placing his glasses on his face. "Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to explore."

What did that mean? Neera opened her mouth to ask, but the Doctor stuck some instrument in her mouth. "Close your mouth around that for a second," he said, "and lift up your shirt so I can see your stomach."

Neera lifted the hem of the twentieth-century hospital scrubs she was wearing, and mumbled something around the instrument in her mouth.

The Doctor removed it, glanced at a reading, then handed it to Rose and told her what to do with it. "What'd you say?" he asked Neera.

"I said, last time someone told me to put something in my mouth and lift my shirt up, it didn't hurt as much."

The Doctor rolled his eyes as Rose snorted with laughter. "Yeah," Rose said, "you're a fifty-first century girl, alright."

He sighed, and poked around the large white not-bandage (which sounded better than tissue regeneration thing). "Almost done," he said, when she winced. "If it still hurts after that, I'll give you something for the pain."

"So, what," she said, peering at him, "you're really a doctor?"

"Oh, yes," he grinned. "Of many things."

Rose laughed and smacked him lightly on the shoulder. He smiled warmly at her. "It's all healed," she said, pointing to her head, "so I'm going to go wash all this blood out of my hair. See you in the kitchen in a bit, 'kay?"

"Righto," he said, kissing her briefly as she walked out.

"Oh," Neera smiled at the Doctor, "so more than friends, then?"

He smiled back. "Yeah."

She tilted her head at him. "So how's that working out for you?"

"As it turns out," he said, taking off his glasses, "absolutely fantastic."

Good. She was glad for them. She remembered all that time ago, finding the Doctor on that horrid abandoned moon colony, all broken and half-mad with regeneration sickness. He had been so wounded, so empty, like a shadow of himself. Neera looked at him now, and saw that he wasn't the same person he'd been then, both physically and psychologically.

She bet a good part of it was due to Rose. She smiled again. They intrigued her, this Time Lord and his human lover. It was a shame she couldn't stick around to find out more about them, but she had things to do. Things that had to be done.

Neera eased herself into a sitting position, wincing as she did so. The Doctor placed a hand on her arm. "It'll heal," he promised, and as she met his eyes, she knew he wasn't just talking about the gunshot wound.

The image of Jaren's dead eyes staring at her as he fell onto the dusty street flashed in front of her, and she closed her eyes, willing it to go away. Tears leaked from the corner of her eyes, and she felt the bed shift beside her as the Doctor sat down and took her hands in his.

Neera opened her eyes and he caught her gaze in his own. He'd taken off his glasses, and his warm, sympathetic brown eyes felt like a life-preserve that she clung to. "You're in pain," he said softly, squeezing her hands gently. "Pain can do awful things to a person. It can force them to make rash decisions, and rush head first into danger simply because if they die, then they won't feel pain anymore."

She felt her eyes sting with more tears as he continued, "Pain also doesn't let a person think clearly. They may think, for example, that they've lost everything in the universe they could ever have cared about. They don't stop to think that there could ever be more; that there could ever be something, or someone, else waiting out there, ready to fill the void inside their hearts."

She couldn't stop the tears from falling, or the sobs from being voiced. The Doctor held her gently as she cried onto his shoulder, never lying to her and telling her that everything would be alright, but instead just comforting her with his silent presence.

When she recovered enough to pull away from him and wipe away some of her tears, he smiled gently at her. "I'd be neglecting my duties as a doctor if I let you suffer through all that pain on your own, don't you think?"

Neera blew her nose on the handkerchief he handed to her. "What does that mean?" she asked, though she could guess at the answer.

"Travel with us," the Doctor smiled. "We're going to help you solve this mystery, Neera. Rose and I both want to find out who's manipulating the Time Agency."

"You'd be willing to do that? To put both yourselves at risk?"

He shrugged. "We do that on a daily basis anyway. And I don't think we have much of a choice in the matter. Something's threatening humanity's future, and I seem to somehow have made a habit of saving you lot, so…y'know, old habits die hard and all that."

He grinned at her and Neera found herself genuinely smiling and even laughing slightly. "So what do you say, then?" he asked.

Her smile widened into a small grin. "Alright, yeah," she said.

"Fantastic!"

……………………………………………………………………………..

Rose stretched out her legs and placed her feet on the kitchen chair opposite. She hadn't bothered to change out of her big pink fuzzy bathrobe and big pink fuzzy slippers. Her wet hair hung around her shoulders, still smelling refreshingly of herbal shampoo. The mug of tea in her hand was nice and warm, and the strong brew slid down her throat and seemed to relax her from the inside out.

Finding a moment to breathe and relax in the TARDIS was a rare thing, and Rose was enjoying every second of it.

The door opened and the Doctor walked in, going first to the teapot on the stove and pouring himself a cup. He sat down opposite Rose, draping his suit jacket across the back of his chair, undoing his shirt cuffs, and loosening his tie.

"You look comfortable," he smiled, taking a sip of his tea.

Rose was about to reply when she was suddenly struck by the odd normality of the scene. Just a regular couple, saying hello to each other over a cup of tea. Only, one of them was a nine hundred year old alien with two hearts, and they were having the cuppa inside a time-traveling spaceship.

She snorted into her tea, then began to laugh uncontrollably. "What?" he said, frowning at her, which only made her laugh harder. "What is it? What did I do? Have I got something on my face? Rose?"

When she could speak, she shared the joke and he laughed as well. As his chuckles subsided, she stood and poured them both another cup. "So," Rose asked, "what'd she say? Is she going to stick around?"

"Yep," he smiled.

She smiled back. "Good. I think I like her. So, we're going to find out who's behind this whole Time Agency thing?"

"Yep," he nodded.

"Does that mean we'll find out why Jack's memories were stolen?"

"Hopefully," he mused.

She paused, then asked the question she really wanted to ask. "Doctor, does that mean we can find Jack now? I mean…if we're investigating this whole Time Agency thing, doesn't that, I don't know…make us part of his events or something?"

He frowned in thought. "I don't know yet, Rose. He got locked into events in 200100 after what happened on Gamestation. He wasn't supposed to make it off that satellite alive, but…"

"But what? What happened? Every time you start to talk about it, you stop. I don't remember what happened after I came back for you, and it's driving me mad, Doctor."

He looked at her, weighing something in his mind. "We'll talk about it, Rose. I promise you, we'll talk about it soon. Just…not right now, okay?"

She wasn't about to let him get off that easily. "When?" she demanded.

"As soon as we can find Jack. I'll explain to you before we go after him, okay? I just can't do this right now, not after…not after what just happened on Sunisa. I don't think either of us can deal with it right now."

Rose reached across the kitchen table and took his hand in hers. "Okay," she nodded. "I trust you. It's just…I miss him, y'know? He was just so…so Jack."

He smiled. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

She ran her thumb across the back of his hand and smiled up at him. "Right, so where are we headed now?"

"Well," he sighed, "I thought we'd make a quick pit stop at Elluria."

Rose lifted an eyebrow. "Oh, really?"

He grinned and laughed. "Yeah, but not for that. Though," he added, "I wouldn't argue against it." He stood, taking both their teacups to the sink. "The point of the excursion, though, is to give Neera a bit of a breather. I gathered from Inurid that a lot of people from all over the universe come to Elluria for a bit of healing, whether physical, mental, or spiritual."

Rose thought over what she'd seen of the Ellurians. "Doesn't surprise me."

"Besides," he added, opening a cupboard and taking something out, "I've got a gift for our hostess, Inurid. Remember how I promised her an exotic plant?"

"Yeah?" she looked at him as he sat down opposite her, cradling a large metal cylinder.

He pressed a button on the side of the cylinder and it parted, revealing what it contained. Rose gasped in awe as she took in the plant's golden beauty. "What is it?" she asked, reaching out a finger to touch it. The leaves turned silver where her fingers brushed it, then changed back to the molten honey color.

"It," he said, taking out the sonic screwdriver and holding it above the plant, "is one of Sunisa's most rare and beautiful treasures. It responds to all sorts of light spectra. Watch."

As he altered the frequency of light emitting from the sonic screwdriver, different color tones rippled across the flower's intricate petals. The leaves shifted from deep gold to red and back to gold, but the flower petals swirled in different combinations of color.

He lowered his hand and smiled at her reaction. "It doesn't have a proper name," he said, "but everyone calls it the desert rose."

She looked at him. "Oh, yeah?"

The Doctor nodded. "Yes. It's a symbol of peace, friendship," his eyes locked on hers, and he added, "and of love."

Her smile widened. "Desert rose, huh?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Good name."

He grinned at her, the warm tones of the plant reflected in his face. "I think so, too."

…………………………………………………………………………….

END


End file.
